High on our to-do list is the Louvre. The object of the game is to avoid the two-hour wait to get into what must be the most crowded museum in the world. The secret is the Paris Museum Pass, which gets you in free, and, even better, into a shorter “preferred” line. We managed to find a place we could buy the pass without a huge line, then headed to the Louvre, destination Mona Lisa. We found this painting in the back of a large room full of people saying,”But it’s so small,” in a variety of languages.
More satisfying was seeing the Venus of Milo and Winged Victory, being able to walk around them and see them from all sides. We wandered through various other rooms. OK, we were lost. The Louvre is impressive as a palace alone. In many rooms the art work was overwhelmed by the ornate ceilings and floor designs made of exotic marbles. There was room after room of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities. We cannot imagine anyone even walking all of this enormous building, let alone seeing all the artwork.
We were exhausted, so we headed to a more manageable museum. (Well, first, lunch at a shady cafe.) The main exhibit at the Orangerie museum are two enormous late works of water lilies by Monet. These were done when he was losing his sight and had retired to Giverny, where he had a garden and lily pond as subjects. Each of these paintings hangs all the way around its own specially designed oval room. It envelops you and gives the feel of being in the lily pond.
Tomorrow Versailles.