Paris Day 3 - The Louvre

Paris Day 3 - Friday, July 15

Right before we went to bed, news started to break about the horrible attack in Nice, and when I woke up the next morning, my phone was full of texts and Facebook messages from concerned friends and family members, checking to make sure we were no where near the incident. Thankfully we were safe, still in Paris and far from the attacks in Nice, but it was sobering news nonetheless. 

I had woken up around 8:00, but the boys continued to sleep and I let them while I finished up my blog entry. They finally woke up around 9:15, and so we rushed down to the breakfast buffet around 9:30 before it closed at 10:00. When we got back to our room, housekeeping was cleaning it, and so we had to wait for them to finish before we could shower and get ready to head out for the day. That being said, we got a bit of a slow start, and didn't end up leaving until after noon. We had dinner plans at 6:00 with a friend of my Aunt Vikki’s, a fellow Kytherian Greek named Vass and his French wife, Bernie, so since our time was limited, we felt like we should stay closely to maximize our time. We decided on the Louvre, as it was just a short walk away through the Tuileries Gardens, right across from our window. 

We didn’t have advance ticket reservations, but according to our guru Rick Steves, we didn't necessarily need them, which proved to be the case. We walked toward the massive complex and approached the iconic glass pyramid entry building. 

There was a line for the security check, but only about a five minute wait, and though the entry building was very crowded, we surprisingly were able to walk up to one of the self serve ticket kiosks and purchase our tickets immediately. 

We entered the Sully wing and headed straight for the Egyptian antiquities, per Ewan’s request. As he is currently devouring Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles book series, he has become the self-proclaimed expert on Egyptian mythology and convinced us that he was capable of deciphering all kinds of hieroglyphics, and readily shared his deep knowledge on the subject. Thus, he was completely engaged in the exhibits, spouting off stories about Rah and Isis and Osiris and Set, much to our amusement.

From there, we worked our way past multitudes of Italian Renaissance paintings to Salle #6 in the famous Denon wing, containing the ever popular (though somewhat underwhelming) Mona Lisa. She still resides where we saw her last when we were in Paris ten years ago, a tiny painting floating behind a pane of glass, smack dab in the middle of a freestanding wall looking rather insignificant in a massive room, cordoned off with velvet ropes so that spectators could only come within ten feet of her, a security guard standing by. Honestly, the spectacle of all of the visitors elbowing past each other to snap their photos, many holding their selfie sticks high in the air to get a less obstructed shot, was more interesting to watch than to see the painting itself. 

Ewan felt the need to see her up close, however, and being smaller than all of the adults, holding my hand, he weaseled our way through the masses to the front of the crowd where we could get a closer look, and he could photobomb most effectively. Once we checked that off the list, we were free to look at all of the other masterpieces in the vast gallery. 

We had been there for several hours at that point and we had all just about had our fill of fine art for the day. We decided to reward Ewan’s patience with some time at the amusement park inside the Tuileries. We spotted a trampoline bungee “ride” for kids that piqued his interest. We thought it would be good for him to get some exercise and have some fun. We bought him a ticket and he waited for one of the six trampoline pads to come available, and watched as the worker buckled him into his harness. 

He jumped for quite a while, and Gavin and I chuckled to ourselves as the ride facilitators seemed a little lax in their supervision once they had all six kids buckled in—one was even on his cell phone as kids bounced away, happily. Ahhh, Europe. Ewan enjoyed his mini-cardio workout, but of course begged to do one more ride—the Flume Ride, a sort of roller coaster water ride that he had been eyeing outside our hotel window. Gavin offered to take him so I could head back and start cleaning up for dinner, but he texted me to let me know when to look out the window so I could see him going by.

After the ride they headed back to our hotel room to get ready for our evening dinner plans. We left our hotel just after 5:30 to walk to meet our friends at our rendezvous near St. Eustache church, at the intersection of Rue Montorgueil and Rue Turbigo, a charming area with tons of cafes. Bernie found us and we chatted for a while before sitting down and having a drink while we waited for Vass, who was delayed. Finally he joined us and we finished our drinks and walked down this lovely street until we found a cafe where Bernie had been before and recommended. 

We had a delightful meal with lively conversation, but Ewan was tired and bored after a long day of museums and boring adult conversation, so we bid them adieu around 9:00 and walked back to our “home-tel,” but stopped for a few minutes at a playground for Ewan to frolic a wee bit before bed.