More Paris Pictures!

Now a positive tip for all visitors to Paris is the Printemps Shopping Gallery which has a Roof Terrace from which you have an awesome city-view. Oh don't get your hopes up about the drinks though, since the wine wasn't really that good but the view is spectacular! They even provide you with a cardboard diorama disc which tells you what buildings you are looking at, very nice indeed.



As most people visiting Paris, we went to the Louvre. Another tip: there are several Virgin Mega stores in Paris (one is located in the Carouselle du Louvre) and there you can buy tickets to the Louvre museum itself which we did the evening before our visit and it shortened our waiting time getting in the Louvre enormously! The Louvre is another of these highly touristical things to experience: so we enter the museum itself, along with hundreds of other people and everywhere you look there's signs saying "Mona Lisa Salles 6" so the crowd starts a stampede up the stairs towards hall 6. At the top of the stairs is a big statue, I can't for the life of me remember how it's called, and all the tourists (most of whom have a walk-man guided tour thingy) stop in the middle of the stairway to take pictures damming the flow of peoples going up! Then the rat race towards that Eternal Smile is on again. Running past all halls 1 through 5, I cannot tell you what is in there sorry, we were flushed straight into hall 6 for well a very small picture of a woman smiling condescendingly down at everyone, yes madam the joke's on us! After that we dived out of the mainstream of tourists and looked up the less familiar expositions. In the end we had a chance of seeing the ancient Greek and Roman Archaeological artefacts and the halls of paintings of the old French, Flemish and Dutch masters. I can now say I have seen some of the art pieces we hobbyists see in the reference books a lot in person! You know what else is strange? This museum houses one of the world's biggest and most important art collections right? So one would assume the museum has some kind of educational responsibility to the larger world audience right? So why are ALL the signs next to the pieces of art in French ONLY!? No I don't want an audio tour! I want to be able to read what painting or statue I am looking at and then converse about it with the people I came to the museum with. I must be mad...



Crowning of Napoleon and Joséphine



Do I need to introduce this one?

While walking back to the hotel that day we stumbled along a small scene on the side walk I could not help but photograph:



I call this piece of art: "The Toy Soldiers Demise"

Well that's all as far as I am concerned.

Au Revoir!