Europe: Paris Day 2

I left early for the Louvre, a good thing, and paid tribute to Mona Lisa first, a very good thing, as the tourist rush arrived soon after and people were nudging each other out of the way like paparazzi at a Paris Hilton court appearance. She, like the Eiffel Tower, wasn’t beautiful so much as powerful, hundreds of years of mystery and guarded protection in the very place I stood (I was having, as a friend who came back from Europe called it, a ‘Robert Langdon moment’).

The Louvre has to be the single biggest building I have ever seen, let alone tried to make my way through – apparently as long as 3 Eiffel Towers laying end to end. It was tough to choose a few indivual sections of the four massive floors to see – if you wandered around aimlessly you would be there for weeks.

So I stuck with the old favourites, large format French and Italian paintings from 13-17 century, paintings of the Renaissance, middle-ages and 19c, and Napoleon III’s apartments, which rivalled any paace I had seen to date.

I wandered past 16-19c Italian sculptures and marvelled at the ruins in the medieval Louvre section. I spent time seeing everything on the Ancient Egypt floor – pitying those who would join me on my Egypt tour later this year only to hear the familiar words ‘…and the rest of the artifacts are on display in the Louvre…’.

Close to mid-afternoon, I found myself walking slowly, my calves aching, staring at the parquet floors absentmindedly like some kind of Louvre ghost, not even looking at the galleries of masterpieces I was passing. It was time to leave.

I was revived by the riverside walk to the cathedral of Notre Dame, and used the church as an overdue excuse to rest my legs and admire the stunning stained-glass windows and impossibly high domed roof. By the time I caught the metro back to the hostel and caught up on laundry, I was so tired I could barely reply to roommates who asked what I’d done that day.

‘Louvre….so big,’ I mumbled, ‘tired…’. They nodded with understanding eyes as I stumbled into bed, dreams of cherubs and marble warriers filling my head before it even reached the pillow.

-Sarah