Paris Day Two

By the time I got back to my room, I was more than ready for a good nights sleep, which unfortunatly, did not happen and so I woke on day tw more than a bit tired. After a good breakfast and some coffee, I headed out for a 9:30 reservation at the Louvre. Since I was itred already I chose that rather than walk, I would UBER. It later proved to be a good choice.

The first thing that impressed me is the size of The Louvre. It is after all a former palace built in the 12th century which opened as a museum in 1793. You enter the museum through the iconic triangle which sits in the middle of the center courtyard.

While The Louvre houses over a half million artifacts, it typically displays around 38000 at a time. Well, minus a few Crown Jewels at the present time!

While I did view a lot of it, I certainly didn't come close to that number. The displays that I did want to see however were The Venus De Milo, The Winged Victory and of course, The Mona Lisa

 

The Venus De Milo is an Ancient Greek sculpture that dates to between 160 and 110 BC. The statue is of the Goddess Aphrodite and except for her missing arms is remarkably preserved.

The Winged Victory of is a sculpture from around 190 BC and depicts the Goddess Nike (sans her head and arms) with a base in the shape of a ship. 

The Mona Lisa is probably the most famous of all paintings in history. Painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500's. She is much smaller that I had imagined but as promised, the angle that you look at her decides if she is smiling or not.

Now the real inpetus for this trip centers around my having a thing for churches and in particular for Notre Dame. I have always had a desire to go there and when I watched it burn in 2019, I thought that I lost my chance. Lucky for me, She has been reborn through rebuild and  restoration. I had read how much the post fire restoration had enhanced the color and beauty of this great church but I was not prepared for just how spectacular it is. Everything that has been restored (they are still working in some areas) is simply brilliant. There is a faint odor of smoke throughout to remind us of what happened there. 

I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

By the time I finished at Notre Dame, it was late afternoon and I was attacked by a pretty bad case of Jet lag so I made my way back to the hotel and to what turned out to be a good night's sleep

There were three things that I would have liked to have visited in Paris, The Arc de Triomphe and Fort Mont-Valerian which is an 1840's fortress that was commandeered by the Nazis and used as a prison and execution sight mostly for resistance fighters that were captured during the occupation. Lastly, Jim Morrison's grave at The Pierre Lachaise Cemetery. If you know, you know!