We got ready as quickly as we could for the
Louvre because by then it was almost 1 PM and our tickets were for 1 PM. I was
a little afraid that they would fuss about that, but I also figured that as
long as it was after 1 PM they would still take us and that was the case. We took
an Uber to the Louvre.
I knew I wanted to go to the Carousel entrance
but I couldn't figure out exactly where it was. I had watched an Instagram
video about it but she didn't explain it very well in the video. I still don't
know what she was trying to describe because that's not how we went. We
found an entrance to the Carousel which was like a mall so we had to go down a
couple levels and walk past a bunch of shops and then we were able to get to
the lower entrance. That worked out well because the line was pretty short,
compared to all the lines that were outside at the main entrance. It was
still a surprisingly long line for already having your ticket, but I think that
was just to get through security.
The women's bathrooms were impossible because
the lines were so long. The boys all got to go to the bathroom but Emily and I
gave up and we went into the exhibitions. The line to scan your ticket was
pretty long but we figured out that if you go to the side, you can do the same
thing there and there were only a few people in front of us so that worked out
perfectly. The Louvre is a big maze with no signs to guide you. They had signs
for things like the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, but there weren't
enough of them so you kind of got lost in between. I didn't have a map because
you were supposed to get that at the information desk downstairs before you got
your ticket scanned so I was lost most of the time. It was so cool, though. It
was totally worth it. There were so many cool sculptures and paintings and so
many awesome things to see. I think if you had a month, you still probably
couldn't see everything. It was pretty overwhelming but also amazing.
There was a line to get in front of the Mona
Lisa to take a picture and then when you did, they told you to take one picture
and move on but nobody paid attention to that. I got a few pictures but
none with us in them.
After that, we took some pictures of the Wedding
at Cana which was a cool one in that same room.
We decided to let everyone go off on their own
if they wanted to and came up with a game plan of texting each other in an hour
and then if anybody got lost and couldn't reach each other to just go to the
Mona Lisa. Luckily, we never had to do that but I was pretty nervous because
the Wi-Fi was spotty at best. We walked around for a little while and then I
decided I wanted to see the Venus de Milo. As much as I was looking forward to
this visit to the Louvre, I didn't prepare very well. I didn't even really know
what famous works of art were there besides the Mona Lisa.
Winged Victory of Samothrace
It took us forever to find the Venus de Milo.
There were signs directing you but it was still very confusing and easy to turn
the wrong way or go down the wrong stairs. The boys stuck with me and Michael,
and Emily went off by herself. Jonny wanted to go with her but she really
wanted to be alone. She had fun exploring on her own. In the end, we all met up
at the Venus de Milo. She had been searching for it, as well.
She told us about a big Saint Peter’s Basilica
painting that we were able to find and I also wanted to see the Napoleon
paintings, the one about his coronation. Emily knew where that was and took us
to it and there were quite a few famous ones over there.
The Coronation of Napoleon
Diana of Versailles
After that, it was almost 5 PM and I was pretty
tired. My sides were hurting me and Andrew really wanted to go get a soda and
Jonny was bored, so I took the two of them and we went back out to where the
restrooms were and waited for everybody else. Michael and Daniel and Emily all
went to look at the Egyptian exhibit. The Louvre used to be a castle and so
they saw remnants of the castle down in the basement. Once it was close enough
to closing time, I let Andrew go get his soda because once he left there, he
wasn't able to come back. Shortly after he left, Michael and the other two
joined us so that worked out well.
We stopped at a little souvenir shop but I
couldn't find a magnet so we kept going. I really wanted to go to a patisserie
shop and there were three beautiful ones there, but then I figured we may as
well try to go to dinner early.
It was around 6 PM by that time. We were easily
able to get to Café Marly. As you're standing there looking at the pyramids,
it's right there on the left. She said our table wasn't ready yet but it
would be outside with a view of the Louvre so we hung out for about 20 minutes
and took a couple more pictures and waited for our reservation at 6:30 PM.
We had a beautiful spot, overlooking the
pyramid. The only problem was that people who are sitting outside at a
restaurant are allowed to smoke so there were people smoking all around us.
Then there was a table next to us with about eight people but it was built for
four and they were all smoking and talking loudly and the smoke was making me
sick. They were being so obnoxious. I sat there thinking that I had made a
terrible mistake because I couldn’t stand the smoke and there was nothing on
the menu that Daniel or Jonny wanted. Thankfully, the people at the next table
left and Daniel and Jonny ended up ordering the chicken so that was
fine. Andrew got the spicy rigatoni, Emily and I got the seabass, and
Michael and the boys got a special chicken with curry and mango chutney. It was
basically a chicken quarter. It was all good food but there was hardly any of
it and we were all still kind of hungry afterwards.
The view from our table
We took a few more pictures and then we tried to
go back to the patisserie shops but the Carousel mall area had already closed
so we found an Uber to take us back to our hotel.
We waited for the Uber at Café de la Comedie. This was taken from our Uber meeting spot.
I was trying to ask him if he could drop us off
at a patisserie or if there was any he recommended, but I don't think he
understood what I was saying so I said just take us to the hotel.
I told everyone that we shouldn't go into
the hotel because if we did we would never leave so we walked around the corner
and down a little bit trying to find a place with some pastries. There was a
little mall type area and we went in there but we didn't find anything except a
Starbucks. We came back out of that and Emily found a place that wasn't far so
we walked a little further and went to the to a place that sold macarons.
It was a L'Occitane store and the macaron shop inside was called Pierre Hermé.
We got a box of eight macarons. They were not cheap. It was €26 for eight of
them. And they were tiny. Each of us chose our own and then we got two extra
which they said were their bestsellers. The bestsellers were disgusting. Like
really bad. I tried the caramel one and it was good, though. All the other
shops we passed were closed or closing up so that's all we could get so we went
back to the hotel.
The fancy bag and metal box for our mediocre, overpriced macarons.
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