The World's Largest

Paris, France
Crowne Plaza Republique

The world's largest museum is the Louvre in Paris.  There is no way that I can convey to you the size of this museum or the opulence.  You just need to see it for yourself.



We learned today that 35,000 pieces of art are displayed but there are over 250,000 plus pieces here.

I'm looking through several hundred photos trying to pick out a few for this blog.

The Louvre means fortress and we learned why today.  In 1189 there was a moat around it and this area would have been filled with water.

George and Linda Morey were very impressed with this fortress.

Venus de Milo was probably the first marble sculpture that I recognized.  Lucky for us, the crowds weren't as bad as normal which gave us a chance to see it from all sides.

In fact, when we pulled into the underground garage for bus parking our local guide said he'd never been parked right next to the door in the 30 years that he's been a tour guide at the Louvre.  We returned to the bus and saw the rows and rows of buses, we understand why he was so impressed.

There were so many galleries.  We especially enjoyed the Greek and Roman antiquities as we've been to Greece and Italy.

The different galleries were themselves a work of art.  How do you like this ceiling?

I could do a whole blog on what the ceilings looked like.

In this gallery there was a collection of tapestries and jewels.

I can't remember the actual carats in this diamond, but I do remember it was over 150 carats.

Here's a tapestry of Henry IV, one of many tapestries.  They actually look like oil paintings.

This gallery was over a 1/2 mile long.

Artists are allowed to set up their canvas and paint copies.  Here an artist doing one in black and white.

This fellow said he just likes to practice.  I thought he did a great job.

Yes, we did get to see Leonardo de Vinci's Mona Lisa.  It was behind glass at the end of a gallery.  I was surprised to see that it was not as large as I thought it would be. 

This will give you a better idea of what I mean by the size of the Mona Lisa.

At the other end of this gallery is one of his other paintings.  Look at the size of this one compared to Mona Lisa.  Did I mention that he did less than 20 actual paintings?

That's a snapshot of a few things that we saw at the Louvre today.





I am trying to download this mornings photos before it is time to go to our Cabaret dinner show in a short time.

After we returned we thought we had enough time to also squeeze in the Catacombs.  It was a chance for us to use our 3 day metro passes.  However, when we arrived and looked at the line, we decided to return to the hotel.  This is the line that stretched around the corner and down the street.

Anne, our tour guide, had said that Angelina's was the best pastry shop in Paris when we passed it this morning on the way to the Louvre.  There were lines outside waiting to get in at that time.  Being the responsible eaters that we are, we decided after our huge breakfast to just have dessert for lunch.  After talking with the concierge he also stated there wasn't anyplace better.  

There was no doubt in my mind what Bill was going to order.  

I have never been to a pastry shop with ornate chandeliers.  I can see why it is so famous.

Well it's time to go to the Cabaret so no time to show you all the other interesting things we saw.

Turtle Safely........