YDYtravelers: Going to the Louvre with George, the incredible Museum of Comparative Anatomy (or something) and also, Van Gogh comes to life!

For the second day in a row, we have a museumerific day. That’s what happens when you buy a museum pass that runs out after four days. Museuming becomes the activity of choice and I don’t want to hear any complaints. George and I set off early for the Louvre, a museum we weren’t initially intending to patronize, but because G is reading The DaVinci Code, we had to check out where all the action takes place. The outing was not so fun in the beginning. Despite having musuem passes (as I’ve said - we have them and the clock is ticking), we found ourselves in a long line to get in the doors. Turns out that “due to extraordinary circumstances” the Louvre did not open at the normal time of 9AM. We waited with all the other Louvrers for over an hour, wondering about what could have happened to delay the opening. At 10, George and I decided that we’d bail out if the line didn’t progress by 10:15. At 10:13, the museum doors opened. So, we waited some more and finally passed through the doors at 10:30. Long wait, yeah, but worth it.

George grabbed a wheel chair, because after all of that standing and waiting, he wanted to be able to enjoy the musuem with our too much fatigue. Our first stop was the medieval section of the basement. Little did I know that there’s a whole fortress was nestled under the roof of the Louvre. Wikipedia says: “During the 19th century, it was found that the dungeon, along with two of the four walls were not completely demolished, but instead the stones from the walls were taken down to fill ditches in preparation for construction of the Louvre palace.” When it became a museum, the Louvre reconstructed some of the fortress hidden below the palace. Like how I’m being all scholarly citing Wikipedia? That’s what all the academics use for references, am I right?

After the underground lair, we took our wanderings to a new level - Level One. There we saw the spectacular French sculpture and plotted our ascension to floor two, where Mona Lisa was hanging out. Here’s the thing about Mona. Almost everyone who goes to the Louvre wants to see Ms. Lisa. So there’s this huge line that snakes from the bottom entry floor of the Louvre and up three floors to her home. She’s actually visiting another gallery this summer and autumn because renovations are going on at her place. So George and I tryed to find the elevator (remember the wheelchair?) to get to level two and for some reason the only one we could find only took us to the first floor. After help from several guards, who all had different advice, one actually escorted us to the fabled 2nd floor elevator and in no time, we were among the masses trying to get into see Mona. Then, something unexpected happened. I was tapped on the shoulder, and George and I were escorted in front of the line of people to get a look the famous painting. The musuem has folks in wheelchairs wheel on up to the painting away from the crowd because, as you’d imagine, it’s hard to see the painting in a crowd while sitting down. Lucky break for us. It saved us the amount of time we spent waiting for the musuem to open to see the Mona Lisa, thus completing George’s DaVinci Code and Louvre dreams.

After all of this excitement, we were Louvred out. We exited through to the Tuileries Garden, one of my favorite places in Paris. In amongst the tree-lined paths, we saw men playing boules. The birds were flocking as they do. And the cafe nestled in the middle of the garden was open and selling crepes. This is the spot where, in 2013, I was stung by a bee, in the rain, eating lunch. Seemed like a good time for a second chance at a pleasant meal, so George and I sat for crepes and hot chocolate. It was tasty and though the bees were hanging out, no one got stung. It did begin to rain as we were leaving but overall, the experience left us unscathed. After lunch, we spent a brief time in the Musee l’Orangerie, where Monet’s water lily paintings are housed. They were lovely, as expected. We discovered that the rest of the musuem was closed for renovations, so it was quite the brief visit.

While we were hanging out with art, Jen, Eliza and Mom went to the Jardin Des Plantes, where they toured some ridiculously cool old sciencey museums. The one that all liked best was the Museum of Comparative Anatomy, which had displays of skeletons and specimens of all kinds of creatures. Eliza took loads of photos, all really interesting and aesthetically pleasing. The amount of bones within this musuem was extreme and the old-school labels and display mounts really increased the oddity scale. Pictures below are courtesy of Eliza K.R. Altenbach.

We all joined together for our last activity of the day. Mom found out about this incredible immersive art exhibit called Ateliers Des Lumieres. It’s held at a large warehouse building that’s mostly empty. There are a few areas to sit and some “walls” made with white sheeting fabric. The entire space became dark and then lit up with an unbelievable symphony of Van Gogh paintings, come to life with music and animation. The paintings surrounded us on all sides, including the floor and moved, animated to the music. I can’t really even describe what the experience was like so check out the pictures below and if you’re ever in Paris (I think perhaps it may be in other cities - not sure), you must see it for yourself. There was a second show, this one about Japanese art, which was also quite impressive. What a way to end another great day in this city. Our evening was spent eating yet another excellent home cooked meal (well, no cooking, really assembling) and then, we held an event that I’ve been preparing for all week. No details on this blog post, however. It deserves it’s own. Here’s a hint though - it involves eating sweets in a very organized fashion. More to come...