Firday Night at the Louvre

Musee Palais du Louvre at sunset. Last night we toured the Louvre. Acting as locals, we chose to have our visit between the hours of 6 and 9 at night on Friday as youngsters under the age of 26 are admitted for free. The lighting last night in the courtyard was absolutely spectacular. The temperature had dropped to right around 60 degrees, a cloudless sky, and a brilliant sun all contributed to the overall perfection of the experience. You enter the museum through the glass pyramid, descending down into the depths of history. Our visit consisted of about an hour of strolling through one wing of the grand palais. Don't get me wrong, the Louvre is a wonderful, wonderful museum, but not one of my favorites. There were three items on my 'must see' list. The Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, and of course, the Mona Lisa. I think no matter what time of day one visits the museum, there is without fail, always a mosh pit of people clustered around the slightly underwhelming Mona Lisa. I think that without this permanent fixture, one might even pass by the old bat without even knowing! At the risk of sounding uncultured and unappreciative of art, which I'd like to think I am neither, I find the actual architectural structure of the museum almost more appealing than its contents....which brings me to another point. Cameras in the museum. There are signs around every corner indicating cameras and touching are under no circumstances permitted. That being said, at any given moment, there were at least 20 flashes going off left and right! Absolutely mind-boggling! Being the good tourist I was, I had retired my camera to its case upon entering the museum. However, deciding I didn't want to disrespect the unspoken rule of paying absolutely no attention to the rules, I promptly pulled my camera back out and began snapping. There was one point I made direct eye contact with a museum curator as I was taking a photo...I sheepishly backed away with a slight shrug and the guilty grin of 'stupid American' on my face. When in Rome! Moral of the story, I left the museum quite satisfied with the pictures I had captured...more of the ceilings and walls than the actual art...I wonder if one day centuries from now, people will studied this period of time and think we could have preserved so much more art had the tourist actually been forced to obey the rules and put their cameras away. Until then, oh well!
Much Love,
SF
-Also, I still realize the grammatical mistakes I make in these posts. Perhaps one day I will write first in Word before copy/pasting to the blog...