Most visited museum

Today we were off to the Louvre.

The Louvre is in a former palace down near the river and it is huge. To see everything, even briefly, would require a few days at least, we had a few hours. In true French fashion there were issues and it opened over an hour late (meant to open at 9am but didn’t open till about 10.45) no reason or apology given, though we did get an email yesterday saying it would open late but not much else. There were thousands queued up outside - it received 8.7 million visitors last year.

Anyway we made it inside and the very helpful Information desk told us it wasn’t crowded so to go straight to the Mona Lisa which we did. We managed to get the obligatory photo and moved on.

We decided to focus on the statues, Egyptian gallery, the French Crown Jewels, and renaissance paintings. This would have been barely a third of the museum.

In the statues gallery we saw the Venus de Milo, the 2 slaves by Michelangelo, and sooo much more. They had sphinxes, columns, and hieroglyphics in the Egyptian gallery. Of course the renaissance paintings had all the masters represented.

Much of the French Crown Jewels were broken up or sold after the revolution so there isn’t a lot. The Louvre have bought back some pieces that had been previously owned by private collectors and there are a few pieces in other museums around France.

By mid afternoon we had our fill of magnificent pieces and headed out for lunch and a drink.

Tomorrow we move on to the third and final phase of our trip, another Back Roads tour covering Anzacs on the Western Front. This means we have to leave Paris and catch the train to Lille in north eastern France.Read more