How much culture and history can you cram into one Paris day?

Sacre Coeur, the Orangerie, and the Louvre: That's how much! 

But if you're going to attempt it, for goodness' sake wear comfortable shoes! (I did not).

So. 

This was our second time in Paris and the goal was not so much to get a feel for the city, but to hit the spots that we hadn't last time due to time constraints and winding up there on a Tuesday when all the museums were shut.

A frantic read of the guidebook the night before revealed that being a Wednesday, the crowds at the Louvre would be hideous in the morning, but also that the Louvre was open late, to 9pm. This in mind we decided to head up the road (literally) to see the Sacre Couer, and grab a museum pass from the info desk there, before heading to the Orangerie to see Monet's water lillies amongst others, have lunch, and then stay at the Louvre basically until we had seen the important stuff and couldn't handle any more Louvre.

An ambitious plan, and one that hit it's first snag when both info desks up in Montmatre we had been counting on were shut. We still have no idea why, at 10am on a Wednesday, this would be the case. The Sacre Coeur however was relatively quiet and the hawkers hadn't set up shop as yet, so even though it was a bit cold and dismal, it was rather nice up on the hill and the views were pleasant. After Barcelona it takes quite a bit to impress us church-wise, and our visit was fairly brief. It was good to see a different style though.

The view from the steps in front of the Sacre Coeur.

Important message on a wall in Montmatre.

We found the metro and headed across town. It was a bit of a hike from the station to the Orangerie but at least it was through that lovely park. A hint of sun coming through the clouds made the general Parisian vibe a bit chirpier.

Birdies in the park!

We got to the Orangerie, where we qued in the slow line and I felt annoyed that we didnt' already have our museum pass that would have allowed queue jumping. As it was we didn't have to wait very long as it wasn't very busy. The water lily paintings where beautiful and I really enjoyed the other art in the museum as well. Don't ask me to name specifics off of the top of my head, but I bought the book so I can look stuff up later when I have time to process everything I've seen on this trip!

This is a Renoir. There was nothing saying I couldn't take pictures but after a few snaps I felt self conscious and stopped.

This is also a Renoir. I like Renoir.

Lunch was the next challenge. We remembered from last time the lack of cafes etc. (affordable) near the Louvre. It's bizarre. Nevertheless we headed a block into town away from the Louvre and wandered along for some time but found nothing that tempted. In the end we were too hungry and footsore, headed back into the park to pike out and have an overpriced lunch in one of the park cafes. It was okay. We were so spoiled  by good food availability and cheaper prices in the south!

To supplement lunch, we got some essential pastries.

Finally, after about one or two pm, we went into the Louvre (this time we were able to queue-jump!). We were already a bit tired by this point and my eyes were starting to give me real grief. I thought it must be the pollution of Paris after so many days in the relatively cleaner air of the south.

Inside, there are three wings. The Denon Wing was where we were supposed to spend the most time, but we kept getting distracted...

The next snag to our plans occurred. The audio-guided walking tour I had downloaded on my smartphone was rendered a bit useless when the first room it suggested you go to was closed for renovations. After some attempts to figure out how to follow it on from after that, which failed, Greg went and got the full audioguide. Why didn't we just do that from the start? Well the Louvre is massive, as you may be aware, and the guidebook guide I had downloaded promised a trip around seeing all the important, famous items without spending six eons (apparently if you went around the Louvre pausing for thirty seconds at every item in there it would take you several years to view everything...)

But with that out of the window, we instead spent the allotted six eons. The Louvre's audioguide, we discovered, is actually really really good – it's built into a Nintendo DS (which for the nongeeks/nontechnos out there, is a handheld game console, it's basically a mini fold-out computer with two cellphone-sized touch-screens). So you have a screen that via the museum's wireless can locate where you actually are in the museum at any given time (which is, on reflection, amazing) and then point you in the direction of items of interest in that room and give you detailed explanations about them if you so desire. It would still take a good week to visit everthing they point out however, so we tried to be frugal. It is fairly heartbreaking to zoom past rooms full of ancient Egyptian relics etc. just so you know you're going to get to see the stuff you really want to see.

We hit the room(s) of classical sculpture first. Some really beautiful stuff. I love, love, love marble sculpture so much...

This one, Amore e Psiche, in particular was absolutely exquisite. It looked more like it was made out of china, it was so fragile looking.

"The Slaves" By Michealangelo. Famous.

 

Venus de Milo. Also famous.

Me and Venus de Milo, just casually. 

Seeing this statue reminded me a of a Jewel song Jupiter) that was a favourite as a teenager... Venus de Milo in her half-baked shell/ understood the nature of love very well/ she said a good love is delicious you can't get enough too soon/ it'll make you so crazy you'll wanna swallow the moon... So there you are.

The hall leading to Winged Victory (and then on to the Mona Lisa). On the stairs you can see the crowds.

Winged Victory

The Louvre itself was an overwhelming item of art, architecture, and history. Pretty sure it was the King's main digs before Versailles was built.

 

We decided these ceiling paintings were of the seasons. Then we found the explanatory bit on the audioguide - we were so right! How awesome at interpreting art are we?

It turns that while Greg is confused by Picasso, he loves Classical and Renaissance art (I think I'm getting the eras right, I'm no expert either). So we spent a considerable amount of the time in the halls of paintings by Italian and French painters from that timeframe – we didn't even get to the Spanish/English etc. painters!

   

(One of )The hall(s) of Italian paintings.

The Mona Lisa. She was surrounded by the usual (so I'd been told) crowd of admirers but it being late in the day I was able to wriggle to the very front without any trouble. It is a beautiful painting, no doubt about it. I do however have to agree with Greg when he asked that if you knew nothing about the any of the painters or paintings (and assuming the crowd wasn't there) in the halls of the Louvre, would you necessarily immediately pick it out as the painting to see? Perhaps a true art critic would... I like to think I would at least stop and notice it – and I have evidence for this: As we were exploring the large hall of Italian painters (prior to seeing the Mona Lisa) a painting made me immediately stop and admire as the face was painted so softly and beautifully – it turned out to also be a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

The Da Vinci that caught my eye. Pretty rubbish photo unfortunately. 

Another Da Vinci.

The painting on the wall behind the Mona Lisa. It's massive.

The ceiling in one of the rooms of paintings....

This painting was really interesting as it was one of the first of that era to be political... it demonstrated the likely truth of a shipwreck that had occurred and such truth did not reflecting well on the ruler of the time...

This painting is of the French revolution. The small boy depicted standing beside the bare-breasted Victory apparently inspired Victor Hugo's character of Gavroche in Les Miserables.

Defeated peoples waiting for the Evil Turks to come and take them away as slaves.

Napoleon propaganda poster showing him visiting an outbreak of sickness in one of his army camps (when in actual fact from what I remember from the guide he never went near the camp and left them all to die and/or ordered that all the sick soldiers be shot). 

 

Um... I'll just be leaving now...

The coronation of Napoleon as Emperor. His mother was a no-show but she got painted in anyway.

The Egypt stuff here we saw in bits and pieces as we went around, I grouped it all together for your thematic enjoyment.

This dude was striking for his glassy blue eyes that seemed to stare right into you. Super amazing!

  

Greg and Feet.

Greg being a Goat.

The Zodiac ceiling. 

Our last stop was down to the basement. Amidst medieval religious art very similar to stuff we saw at the Petit Palais in Avignon, was this rather beautiful wooden carved statue of the Virgin Mary.

This was the last thing we looked at in the Louvre. Desperate to see more but too tired and admitting defeat, we gave up after 7pm at night and headed for home base.

On the way out, we make the most of using the glass pyramid to exit (we snuck in through a boring side entrance at the start).

The late evening sun as we left.

Back in Montmatre we stopped into a friendly looking restaurant for tea. It turned out to be Madagascan fare, which was suitably random (and not my favourite of the trip, but edible). The lady was very nice. To explain the menu to us in English she grabbed the whole blackboard, parked it on a chair, and talked us through it. It was a bit like being in school again!

Almost the last chance for French wine in France!

THEN it was homebase and bed! Another crazy day awaited us....