Le Louvre

This is one of the most important things to see in Paris mostly because of the Mona Lisa but it's the largest museum in the world. We walked there and it didn't take as long as I had expected. We got there before the crowds I think because there was hardly anyone there. I was feeling terrible when I went in and for the first part of our visit because I hadn't had a good breakfast and was really thirsty. I was feeling dizzy and spent a lot of time sitting down looking at the art. I know that it was because of hunger now because after we had lunch I was feeling fine. The first part was mostly sculptures of naked people and animals. They all have some kind of meaning which I understood in a lot of them. There was one famous sculpture we saw that was of Venus (or Aphrodite, Greek's called her Aphrodite and the Roman's called her Venus) and was famous for how her body was twisted kind of as if she were dancing. Both of her arms were missing but there was still a huge crowd taking lots of pictures. Aphrodite was the god of love. After we saw this we got lunch at a cafeteria because my head was still hurting and mom and dad ranted about the prices. I don't blame them because it came to about 64 euros which is over a hundred bucks in the states and it was just a little cafeteria. We then went to see the Mona Lisa. I appreciated the art a lot more then because I was feeling a lot better. Some of the statues were amazing. One of my favorites was the sphinxes which looked like they'd come from ancient Egypt and looked like a cat ready to pounce. Another was the lions just because of how much detail the artist added and how realistic they looked. Most of the rooms in the Louve are elaborate with gold everywhere and really good paintings. I recognized some of them like Icarus falling from the sky after his wax wings had melted due to him flying to close to the sun and his father watching. Another statue I liked was an angel-like figure standing on a ship which was made after a big naval victory. It haded tons of detail in the expression and how her shirt was kind of sticking to her because of the water. When we finally got into the room where the Mona Lisa was being held there were huge lines and the painting was behind bulletproof glass. The eyes of the painting are supposed to follow you wherever you go in the room but I couldn't really see because it was behind thick glass. The reason for this was because the Mona Lisa was stolen and not found for 2 years so they probably didn't want this to happen again. It's probably worth over a billion dollars. It's so famous because of how the colors mix and other small details that are apparently unique to the painting. There were tons of other paintings in the Louve that were similar and some that I thought were a lot better but critics probably see some kind of style that they've never seen before. We were going to go to a different museum but instead decided to go see some of the rooms they'd recovered from Napoleon's castle. I would love to live in a place like that. There was gold everywhere and it was all really fancy. His bed was also elaborate. The ceilings were painted with colorful images that gave the whole place a happy vibe. After this we went and some some more statues and my favorite one we saw then was the one with a man with his hand stuck in a tree trunk with a lion biting his thigh. The story behind it was a myth about a man who was a great olympic athlete and he made a bet that although he was getting old, he was still strong enough to break a tree trunk in half with his bare hands. He tried and ended up getting it caught in the tree. He couldn't get out so wolves came and ate him. There were also a lot of statues of horses and unicorns. When we got upstairs to look at more paintings there were lots that I liked but none that are famous that I could pick out. We kept looking at paintings until the PA told us they were closing. We then headed back to our appartment with a plan of picking up an ice cream on the way. I got a three flavor cone which was huge with whipped cream on top. It was way better than anything I'd ever had in the states. When we all finished our ice cream we went and climbed all over a sculpture in a sitting area for a while before heading home. Tonight us kids picked up dinner by ourselves again. We got a couple of pizza's and some Pan du Chocolat's. A Pan du Chocolat is a croissant with a small amount of chocolate in it.