You Just Can't Visit Too Many Museums or Eat Too Many Desserts

We stayed up waaaay too late Sunday night uploading photos to Flickr and blogging... so we decided to sleep in until 9:30am.

So much for that... at precisely 8:00am, we were awakened by hammering, drilling, sawing, and other loud banging noises. It seems someone is renovating the upstairs apartment.

We scrambled some eggs, got ready, and hit the streets of Paris with a a few important objectives.

Our first stop was the patisserie... BINGO! Teri got her chocolate eclair. However, as good as it was, it turned out to be filled with chocolate creme, not vanilla custard... so technically, we're still looking for the perfect eclair. I had a bite of this one, and I know that irrespective of the filling type, it was the best I'd ever had.

Flush from our eclair success, we headed for Angelina, hoping to get some of their famous hot chocolate. Found it! We had a less-than-friendly server, but managed to communicate our desire for some hot chocolate and a plate of cheeses.

Teri didn't like the hot chocolate! It was like drinking a dark chocolate bar, but it just didn't do anything for her (so I drank the rest!). She ordered another dessert that was alternating layers of pastry and custard, called Millefeuille. It was yummy, too.

Knowing that cheese and dessert were not enough nourishment to sustain Teri for long, we found some tasty pizza from a street vendor.

I read on several internet sites that there is a "secret entrance" to the Louvre which allows you to bypass the long lines of people descending into the museum at the glass pyramid. Obviously it isn't much of a secret, but the 99 Rue de Rivoli entrance delivers what it promises: A way to enter the museum without standing in line at the main entrance in the Louvre courtyard.

The secret entrance is easily found further West along the Rue de Rivoli-- it is easily recognized due to the red awning with the address clearly written on it. When you pass through this door, to descend stairs to the large shopping mall which features many high fashion stores. There are automated ticket machines where you can buy your admission tickets , and then walk straight into the museum.

The Louvre is beautiful. It is more than simply the largest museum I've ever seen... it is also a grand royal palace, and a landmark in its own right. It is larger and more grandiose than Versailles which replaced it. Much like Versailles, there is intricately carved stonework everywhere, inlaid stone floors, and beautiful elaborate frescoes on the ceilings.

Knowing we had only a few hours before museum fatigue would set in for Teri, we hustled to the Big 3 prizes of the Louvre: The Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa. You can get quite close to the Venus, and its detail and beauty is plain to see. Winged Victory is impressive for its story of discovery and its antiquity. The Mona Lisa looks just like you expect, only smaller... and it's very difficult to get close to it (see photo at the right). After that, we just kinda walked briskly through a great deal of the museum.

In our sprint through the Louvre, we saw more paintings than I thought existed; hundreds of marble sculptures; and also walked through the "History of the Louvre" exhibit, which was fascinating.

The Louvre has an extensive exhibit of Egyptian artifacts, including dozens of sarcophagi. It spans two floors at one end of the museum, and we only managed to see half of it. Many of these items were "collected" by Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign, and to this day the Egyptian government's requests for their return fall on deaf ears at the Louvre.

The biggest surprise for me was yet another part of the Louvre itself. During the remodeling which featured the construction of the controversial glass pyramid, archaeologists excavated what remains of the 12-century version of the Louvre: A medieval castle. At least 20 feet of the castle walls are intact! You can walk around and through them by descending into a special chamber below the museum.

We managed to see quite a bit more of the museum than we anticipated, since we got lost trying to leave! After racing through the Mesopotamian displays, we must have taken a wrong turn. We found ourselves in the Richelieu wing, home to an enormous collection of French Sculptures ranging from the 5th to the 19th century. They were magnificent, but I must admit I didn't pay much attention... we still couldn't find the Sortie. Teri was imagining us being stuck in the museum when it closed, and all those sculpture coming to life!

An exit finally presented itself, and we hit the coat/bag check just ahead of the crowds. Two grocery visits later, we had everything we needed to make a delightful meal at home: Ravioli w/ meat sauce, a fresh baugette, and a bottle of wine.

It had been quite a day!


Eclair Update: We had a success of sorts... Teri got a fresh eclair, but the filling wasn't quite what she hoped (see above). She has searched the vicinity (using Google Maps) for other patisseries, and she's probably going to visit them in the quest for the perfect eclair.