...I left at about noon. No problem, I thought, I'll just pop over to one of the many tasty bakeries of Paris and nab a croissant!
Guys, I don't know where they hide the many tasty bakeries of Paris, but I found not a one. But in my wanderings, I found myself at the Louvre, so I decided to postpone my search for food and look at super cool art instead.
Let me take a minute to describe the Louvre to you. I want you to imagine the biggest hedge maze you can possibly imagine. The one from the Shining, perhaps. Now multiply that times ten. Now, instead of hedges, make all of those walls giant stacks of paintings. Then, put that maze under a roof, and cover the roof in paintings. Then randomly throughout the maze have giant pillars, made of more paintings.
Then you will have imagined something approximating the Louvre.
I'm sure you've heard it's big- it's said it would take nine months to see every piece of art inside. But just the OUTSIDE is huge. There are two giant wings- my guess is, about a mile long each. Then a smaller wing connects them- probably about 3 or 4 city blocks. Then there is another of these smaller wings kind of halfway down the two larger wings.
All of those wings have four floors, and all of those floors are full of art. And not just like, rows of paintings side by side. No, the paintings are usually at least three high, and these aren't small paintings. The Mona Lisa was one of the smallest I've seen- the rest are, I'd say on average about 5 feet by 5 feet. HUGE PAINTINGS! And so beautiful!
Now, as you may remember from yesterday, I don't speak French. I also don't read French. And I didn't want to pay the 9 Euros for an auditory tour, so I had NO idea what most of the paintings were, or who painted them, or why they're important. In some ways though, I think that's better- I enjoyed almost every piece of art entirely on it's own merit, without expectations. My pictures, therefore, have very little explanation- they're just pictures and statues that moved me for some reason. I particularly liked the Spanish paintings- the ladies all looked very sassy. Most of the statues I loved because they were so LIFELIKE- I actually couldn't look at any of them for very long, they looked like they were going to start moving and it freaked me out. No seriously- I looked at the first one for at least ten minutes, and was convinced I saw it breathing.
After I left the Louvre (about five hours) I wandered (read: got very lost) the streets of Paris until ending up at the Musee d'Orsay. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, which is too bad- almost every piece of art was out of this world beautiful. Including what was, I think, my favorite piece I saw all day:
Ophelie done by Auguste Preault. Sadly, I didn't get to finish my tour of the Musee d'Orsay as it was closing. So I wandered (re: got very lost and eventually stumbled) back to my hotel, stopping at a grocery store on the way for some delicious pasta salad, strawberries, and (finally) a yummy torte. I have no fork, so I had to eat the pasta salad with my fingers- messy, but still delicious. Now I'm going to go run me a bubble bath and eat my strawberries in the tub. Au Revoir!
p.s. Oh yes! I almost forgot. I uploaded my pictures from yesterday and today- you can see them http://s163.photobucket.com/albums/t304/wotchermoony/Paris/. I would recommend clicking on the first one and then clicking the 'next' button in the upper right hand corner- I wrote explanations for most of them, and that way you can see them. For the ones with no explanation- they were just art, which I liked, and which were painted by old famous artists.
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