Louvre & D'Orsay Museums
Today was museum and palace day. Word to the wise: be prepared to wait in LONG lines. Then once you get into the museum expect big crowds around the most popular exhibits like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. We are here before the big seasonal tourist crush and already the crowds are fairly large. We visited both the Louvre and the D'Orsay Museum, which has a great collection of impressionist art.
Mona Lisa/La Gioconda
Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous painting dominates the Louvre...
Musee du/Louvre Museum
Last time I was here, our tour gave us 1 hour & 15 minutes...I was literally running around trying to see everything like a maniac. No way to enjoy the world's largest museum. So, we dedicated half a day to this and picked only 1 of the 3 wings to visit – this museum would take a full week to see all of it.
We select the Denon Wing containing the art from the Renaissance, including the Mona Lisa. The tour starts with Giotto, who has been acknowledged as the first artist to employ the 3-D (with depth) style of the Renaissance instead of the 2-D (flat; no depth) style of Medieval art that was prevalent.
Then more of the early Renaissance painters come along until you reach the high Renaissance with a few paintings by the big 3: Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Rafael. We then seeked out select sculptures in the other parts of the musuem: Michaelangelo's "Dying Slave", the famous Greek statue of "Venus de Milo", and "Wings of Victory". Finally, after utter exhaustion, we have a light lunch at the museum cafe and head across the Seine River to the other great museum in Paris...Musee/D'Orsay Museum
This museum primarily focuses on paintings, but picks up where the Louvre left off. Here the artwork focuses on artwork from the 1800s onward, including Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Paintors such as Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, and Monet are featured with select paintings of some of their best work. Even Whistler's Mother is here – it's a cool painting, but sort of an oddity since it's an American piece in an almost exclusive European collection and thus appears a little out of place.
Palace of/du Versailles
We make the 1/2 hour train trip to the town of Versailles and then the 20 minute hike to the palace grounds. Wow, I was here in 1987 with my mom, but forgot how large this place is.
The front courtyard is so massive that it is measured in acres instead of yards. Once inside, we tour the main palace. The best part is the Hall of Mirrors – mirrors on both sides with chandeliers hanging down...this royalty was narcissistic or what!
Since the palace grounds are huge and it was late in the day, we opted not to visit the other sites such as the Grand and Petit Trianons that were literally more than a mile away on the other side of the palace grounds. But we venture out onto the palace garden and nearby grounds and are greeted with a thunderstorm. Locke and I huddle down with our umbrella and my raincoat on the steps looking out over the palace grounds and watched as folks scampered to get out of the rain. One of those moments that we enjoyed...An icon that personifies the former French Empire...
-- Al & Locke
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