Le Louvre. That is all. ;)
Today we literally spent just at the Louvre. It's huge!!!! Part of it is even torn down and it's huge. Snap! The Louvre is the first real museum in the world that was open to the general public. It was originally a medieval palace that was converted to the style it is now when the king though it was time to modernize along with the rest of the world...Italy. It's been added onto by each ruler of France since then and each section had the ruler's mark on it. Pretty cool eh?We were given a two hour tour by Bernie, who is awesome. I could have kept going for hours. He's full of knowledge. We started outside and talked about the building itself, then moved inside to the Mesopotamian section, then moved on to the roman and Italian art and sculptures. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa, and then saw the most recent wing: the Arabic artifacts.  It was a pretty great tour. Afterward, our group kept looking around for a few hours. We eventually found our way into the Egyptian wing. I had nothing to do with that...They might have been guilted into it. They'll thank me someday. It was awesome. After looking around a bit more we went home. I really don't understand how people flock to things like the Mona Lisa and the Venis de Milo, but can ignore so many other equally great works of art and history. Don't get me wrong, I love them too, but those rooms were so crowded and the rest of the museum was empty in comparison. I hope these people took time to appreciate art and history rather than icons that are famous for no real reason except luck and circumstance.  Anyways, I think that's all I feel the need to say at the moment. Lots of love.

 Our group on a guided tour of the Louvre from Bernie, who by the way, is a fantastic tour guide! The boys look so into what he's saying, son't they?

 I'm at the Louvre!!!!!! AGH!!!!!!

 The oldest part of the Louvre still standing, if you don't count the medieval castle underneath it. ;) Dates from the fifteenth century if I remember right.

 The group getting ready for the tour; head sets and all. Took forever. Once we were finally ready, we found out some of the girls had gone to the restroom and had to wait longer.  Bernie said, "This happens every time. In ratings they always say he's great, but scary when you have to use the restroom. It's true, I can be quite mean." I like him.

 
French art. Notice the cool, yet scary looking snake on the right. I think this is Hercules, but I could be wrong.

 
Mesopotamian artifacts! Learned about the birth of reading and writing. The statue on the right is a king looking at a temple layout, the first ever found of its kind. He said he was visited by a God himself and told to build this temple.

 
This is the oldest "laws"/ words of wisdom ever written. Lawyers apparently study about this in school. Who knew? It's similar to the law of Moses.

 I'm standing in front of Gods! Well, sort of. I forget what they are called, but they are pretty cool.

Proof that they believed in mermaids back then!!!! This makes me happy.

The top section of a column that stood in the Persian King Darius's palace.  This thing was huge!!! A real show of power and riches since he lived in the desert where there are limited resources, which means he had them shipped to him.

These people figured out how to chemically fuse the colors to the stone to prevent decay of the paint. Too bad the Romans and Greeks didn't figure that out. The sculptures and building that we think of today as plain, pristine marble would look a whole lot different.

A section of the medieval castle under the Louvre that was found in the last century when construction of the Louvre was underway. We literally stood in the moat of the old castle!!!!

Draw bridge section of moat.

My favorite statue once again. Quite popular it seems. 

There she is folks! The Venis de Milo, the armless beauty and sculpting masterpiece.

 This is the winged victory. Believed to be Athena, the Goddess of war, standing on the bow of a war ship, saluting if she had arms still. Losing arms is a popular thing to do. Might need to try it sometime.

 
One of Leonardo de Vinci's paintings. The Louvre actually had five of them, including the Mona Lisa. De Vinci was one of the modern painters asked to France to educate them in his ways. He died in Paris, which is why the Louvre has five of his paintings. I really like this one of Mary and the Christ child in a cave. Leo was one of the first to use oil painting. Before they used egg to get the paint to work. That was super interesting to me. I always wandered about that.  Painting with eggs took a lot more effort than painting with oil. Oil has a better blending affect too. Beautiful.

My favorite statue once again!!! She's everywhere. Life is good. I wander what happened to the original. No one really knows.

 
The crowd to see the Mona Lisa was insane!! Just look at this picture. I literally had to push my way to the front to get this close up picture only to be rushed along by this museum guy. No hard feelings though dude. We're cool. I always thought she was famous for a reason, but I found out today that it was all really just circumstances and luck that made her famous. The Mona Lisa is just another of De Vinci's paintings, all wonderful and many of them use that same smile. Food for thought.

 
The wolves on the right are scary looking in case you were wondering. Can you imagine living there? Maybe walking by them at night and seeing them snarl as they attack poor beasts who were trapped in their claws?  Ya, no. I'm not sure what the king was thinking except that he likes hunting, so wolves on the hunt is a natural choice?  This is the real reason Louis XIV made Verseilles. ;) The Louvre freaked him out.

This is a painting we learned about in class, so of course when I saw it in person I had to get a selfie with it.  Example of Neoclassic art.

Selfie with winged victory

This is a painting of the Sobine women.  Cool isn't it? Couldn't help but sing the song from "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" after wards. Yep, now it's in my head again.

Ok, he seriously looks like he's taking a selfie of himself after defeating the dragon. Can you imagine the caption with that? " Just defeated this dragon. No big deal. All in a day's work."

It's ancient Egypt time!!!!!! Me in front of a Sphinx.

 

 

 
Hanging out with my new friends, his highness on the left and Polly on the right. I know they're a bit stiff, but you'll like them once you get to know them.

This is a giant bowl!!!!!! I imagine people smashing grapes inside it to make wine, but I have no idea what it was actually used for.

  

 I'm at the Louvre!!!!! AGH!!!!!!!

View from the arch du Caroussel. You can see the Ferris wheel, the obelisque at the place de Concorde and the L'arc de Triompne all lined up. Kind of cool.