Paris Part Deux

Wow, this took me a while to put up, but hey, I've been busy!  This was my last day in Paris which was quite eventful to say the least...

DaVinci Code anyone?  That's all I could think of the entire time I was there.  Little do people know that the line to get into the museum closely resembles that of Disneyland in that I had to wait for over an hour to buy a ticket!  A little outrageous, I know.  At least this ride lasted longer than 2 1/2 minutes.  When I was waiting in line I heard two people behind me speaking English, so I turned around and started talking to them.  Ends up they are Tom and Sue from New York state here on vacation.  At one point we speculated the entrance fee to the Louvre would be something like 40 euro, and I was not into that considering I only had around 35 euro on me.  They were way too kind and said stick with them in line because if I'm short they'll pay for me.  Nice people do exist!  When we got to the ticket booth it said that those 18 and younger were free.  We joked that I would act like they're high school daughter (maybe I couldn't pass in looks...but definitely attitude!).  Ended up only being 10 euro so I lucked out!

This was probably my favorite exhibit of the entire museum, yes even more than the illustrious Mona Lisa.  This was a project put together by the artist Mimmo Jodice where he photographed painted portraits and paired them next to head shots taken of museum employees.  It was very interesting to see classic art juxtaposed against today's culture, especially because in some cases I couldn't tell a difference!  Well done Mimmo, well done!

You see how long that corridor is?  Yeah, let's say I got lost more than once and this area became quite familiar.  It's not like a regular museum where everything is in English and they have a set path for people.  You can basically go in any direction and there were some signs, but they didn't help me much. And I'm not disposed to keeping a map glued to my nose as there were masterpieces on my right and left. After seven hours of exploring, I finally got out.  My feet were kaputt to say the least.

                            

You guessed it: it's the Mona Lisa!  (The last statement is dripping with sarcasm)  I took a photo with tons of people purposely because this is basically how it is.  The museum staged the painting so it could resemble some hot LA photo shoot and Mona Lisa is the model.  Come on, I won't fall for that.  It was also disheartening because other artwork was just as good, if not better than this work!  Sorry Leo, but I have to tell the truth.

I really wanted to hit up the Musée d'Orsay across the street, but alas I was 10 minutes too late to buy tickets.  Instead I got to observe some street art instead.  I would say this guy is wearing roller skates, but it's more like wheels strapped to the bottom of his tennis shoes.  He set up these cups and skated between each of them extremely fast!  I wish I would've recorded a video, but that would make me look even more like a tourist.  At one time skated through the cups while holding a child, but needless to say when he returned the girl to her parents, her mother comes up and immediately gives the girl a hug as if she cheated death or something.  Amazing.

I didn't want to take the metro back to my hotel (more like I couldn't find a metro stop), so I explored the city for a bit.  That was probably the best part of the trip, when I meandered around the city.  I just hoped that no one would speak to me because they'd peg me as the ignorant American.  I saw the steeple of this church from afar and had to stop.  Literally a park in front of a run of the mill church in Paris.  It's amazing!

This is how Paris said goodbye to me: rain pouring so hard even real Parisians wouldn't go outside.  I'm from Utah, I can hack it.  So I sort of got extremely wet and when I arrived back at the hotel the concierge totally laughed at me (it also didn't help that she was a hoity toity Parisian).  All in all, I'm not sure I'd live in Paris permanently, but I'd definitely go back and visit!

My adventures in Germany to come next!