Day 2 April 6

Sunday, April 06, 2008 1800

Hello. Here we are again. We all have our roles. Luke is cooking dinner per usual, and I am now writing per usual. This morning we got up at 6.30. I woke up and was rolling around in bed. I started rubbing Luke’s back and talking to him. He then asked me when the alarm was going to go off. He was so tired he didn’t hear it even ring.

The bed we slept in was A DREAM. We have NEVER slept in a bed more comfortable, and it wasn’t because we were so tired. It is like a foam top mattress- like tempur pedic. I can’t wait to sleep tonight.

Luke packed lunch, made coffee and fixed me a commercial croissant with nutella on it for breakfast while I showered and dried my hair. He made a whole pot of espresso to put in our thermos. We were on the road and arrived via metro to the Louvre as the door opened at 0800. It was so easy to get there. There is a direct door from the metro line. As you exit the car you walk 100 feet and you are at an entrance to the museum. How slick. We walked to the entrance to the museum and were like the 10th people in line. We waited a bit until 0900 opening. The entrance price was free today since it was the first Sunday of the month. Yippee.

We followed Rick’s tour by the book. We first went to the Denon wing and saw the Venus de Milo. I believe we saw a copy of that in a museum in Italy. She wasn’t so impressive. We then saw winged victory. Rick Steve’s made a comment about her dress and the sea spray; I think it had something to do with a wet T- shirt contest. Rick what a weirdo in normal people’s clothing. Her hand was missing and was found buried in Turkey, how they knew it was hers I’ll never know.
The louvre used to be a French palace. They built on the Grand Galley to connect it with another palace. We saw some French royal jewels and crowns. I was so jealous. Saw Mona Lisa from about 30 feet away. The crowds were pretty thick, we had to push a bit to get closer. It was a bit of a let down. We saw some Caravaggio, enjoyed that.

Saw the Hermaphrodite greek statue lying on a cushiony mattress, a beautiful woman until you walked around her you saw her penis. Whoa. I took a picture. Saw some renaissance stuff, we actually recognized them. Then we also viewed Madonna on the Rocks, the Frenchman David’s (DA-veed’s) rendition of Napoleon’s Coronation. Saw Giotto’s St Francis of Assisi where he gets JC’s stigmata. Saw Michelangelo’s statue’s “slaves.” I liked those better than the ones in the Academia. I liked Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque- it is a lady reclining on a bed with an unnatural S curve to her back. She was beautiful.

A funny painting, (that we couldn’t stop laughing about) was a picture of Jesus coming down from heaven to do something….Anyway Luke thought it looked like he fell out of the tree he was standing in front of. Like huhhheaaahhh! We kept giggling about it. I am Jesus probably has a sense of humor.

We had an espresso (from our thermos) in a stairwell, and that served as a nice pick me up. We finished Rick’s tour in 2 hours as he said. We walked on and went to see some Durer, Rubin and I don’t know what else. We walked around and around looking to find Hammarabi’s code. It turns out they had it in a special exhibit that had to be paid. We weren’t going to see it.
We made our way to the exit. We ate our lunch in the shadow of the Grand Pyramid. We ate cheese and butter sandwich, dried berries, hard boiled egg, pretzels, h2o and coffee.

The next thing on the list was to go to the Arc du Triomphe. On the subway we saw all kinds of people dressed for a running race. We figured out where they were headed- the Champs Elysses. That is the street the Arc is on. The Arc is a monument that Napoleon had constructed in honor of a big French Victory- I think it was Austerliz.

The monument was flooded with runners and tourists. There were tons of people watching to be had. We didn’t really think it was spectacular, but just OK. We did see a little boy pee on the monument. He had his mom hold his wiener to pee in public, as he must have had to go real bad. I couldn’t believe it. I guess public urination is OK when there are so few toilets around.

Then we decided to go to Notre Dame to see the organ concert. We dinked around outside and read the tour Rick provided. We wandered up a street filled with street vendors. They sold books and prints and trinkets, it was very worthwhile because they didn’t hassle or bark at us as we passed. We did some people watching along the Seine. A little J.R. doggie and his owner were on a walk down there. The doggie stopped and sniffed at this one spot for a while. The owner thought he was going to poop. He just kept sniffing; she decided to pull him on if he wasn’t going to do business. The doggie did the mule and dug his paws in to resist. She gave him another chance to poop, but kept sniffing, she pulled again- dog did the mule action and the lady wasn’t going to have it-she pulled the little dog and pulled him against his will- about 8 inches before he gave in and walked on his own power. We had some time to kill before entering Notre Dame. We walked around the neighborhood and found an artisan baker; we stopped in and had a jambon quiche and a croissant. The quiche was kind of spicy like taco seasoning, maybe it was coriander or something. It was pretty good. It was about 4 inches round with a pie crust type crust. It was served to us in a paper wrap. We should have bought croissants! They were so good and dark brown, I like the burnt part.

Then, in front of Notre Dame we stood at the zero point, the old exact center of Paris. It was marked by a brass marker in the ground. We took a picture of a bored gargoyle. Also took a picture of some of the statues outside of the church, got some flying buttresses etc. The interior of the church was relatively unremarkable except for the pretty arched ceilings. Saw the Rose window, took a photo. We waited in pews for the concert to start. Then we saw Mom and Dad! They came upon us quickly and in a surprise. We had gone our separate ways today and here they found us! How neat. The organ concert was putting many people to sleep. My husband and I were included, 2 people in front of us had fallen asleep. Mom said she was getting tired too. We left a bit early headed home and Luke started.

Luke made beef stew/soup tonight. We had fresh baguette bread, oranges and strawberries. The base that Luke made the soup with had a disclaimer- “ may contain fish or crustaceans” What a crock. Poor mommy, so needless to say she didn’t eat any stew. Luke made her noodles and butter.

I am hoping we will decide more concretely what we will do tomorrow. We did part of tomorrows walk today. Ljf