Day 36: Or The Day of My First Trip to The Louvre, This Decade

Winged Victory, and Me

I woke up early today. Well in reality I jumped up at god knows what hour when the doorbell rang. I was completely confused, thought I was late for work, then slowly realized it was Saturday. An hour or so later I got up to make the trek into town.

La Joconde

This is my friend's last weekend in Paris, so we needed to make sure she hit some more of the high points of Paris. We decided to go to The Louvre and meander for awhile. Once you get to our station in the village, you don't even have to walk outside to get there. The Metro stop opens up into the museum so it's perfect for cold or rainy days. Today just happened to not be that cold, but it's good for me to know in the future.

Venus

I went to The Louvre once before when I was 15. We saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo, but that's about all I remember. I'm happy that on any given weekend with nothing to do I can wander around and see a whole new section. Today was a fairly broad sweep of one of the halls though. I was surprised by how much I remembered though. It was nothing specific, just seemed familiar. Walking around the Palace, you see the ceilings and the marble work and realize that the building itself is the best part, at least for me. It's a pretty spectacular place.

Just another staircase ceiling, no big deal.

Afterwards, we walked for a bit to get some air and found a great little sandwich shop and bakery. The sandwiches were under 3 euros and everything else was fairly priced as well. We were very happy with our discovery because prices seem to blow up at the tourist locations. Somehow we managed to walk up to the Pompidou Center without any intention of seeing it. I'm not the biggest fan of the building, I don't feel it fits in, but it's pretty cool to look at.

C'mon, you know it's awesome

Made it home at a decent hour and preparing for day 2 of the sight seeing weekend. I've added just a few pictures but I feel like they just don't give the place justice. Feel free to come visit and I'll show you the place in person. No pressure though.

Centre George Pompidou