The Heavy Hitters

Wednesday and Thursday were for the Louvre and Versailles - huge places which are impossible to see all of in one try.

I arrived early at the Louvre and spent about 7 hours actually looking at art, plus time waiting in line.  For those of you who will ask, no I did not enter though the pyramid, because it wasn't worth the crowded line.  I saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and about 5,000 other masterpieces. I actually loved da Vinci's other works (there were a total of 5 of them in the museum) better than the Mona Lisa.  Napoleon crowning himself ("The Coronation of Napoleon") was enormous and entertaining.  All in all, it was a huge art museum, with French signs and labels, and wasn't as exciting to me as the Orsay or the Orangerie, which I visited for an hour after the Louvre.  It has Monet's giant water lilies in two oval shaped rooms - amazing - and a other normal-sized works by a variety of Impressionists.

The Hall of Mirrors

Versailles in 4 words: Crowded, ornate, amazing gardens.  Using more words, I give Rick Steves two thumbs up again for his podcast that walked me through the chateau and grounds.  I was blown away by the grandeur and detail in every room, the color choices of fabrics on chairs, beds and walls, and the beautiful painted ceilings to which too few people (now and probably back then) paid attention.  However the gardens and the Hamlet really caught my interest.  Marie Antoinette had this small village built so she could "play peasant."   Well, it was the most beautiful 12 building village ever designed by architects for a queen.

Me in front of a very cute house commissioned by Marie Antoinette

Today (wow I'm posting about a current day!) I wandered to the Marais neighborhood and visited the Pompidou Center (modern art). All you engineers would have loved the building itself, with its pipes and ducts on the outside as art.  Some of the art was beyond my understanding or interest, but the works by Picasso, Matisse and of course Calder (two mobiles!) were worth seeing.

And that, my friends, is all from France, until I add photos.