Paris Day 2

We're leaving on another trip this weekend, and I'm committing myself to finish writing about Paris before I move on to another city.  So here goes...

Saturday ended up being our whirl-wind day in Paris where we tried to fit in all the major sites (excluding the Eiffel Tower.)  It ended up being a success!  Our first stop was the Louvre, so we took the metro from our hotel to downtown.  When the metro stopped, we saw a huge crowd of teenagers in the station jumping and cheering.  Then we saw they were all waving flags.... Colombian flags.  More teenagers got off the metro and joined them, and Hyrum was so excited to see so many Colombians.  He had on his Colombian bag, so they all started cheering for him, and they got together for a picture.  The longer I'm married, the more I realize that being loud and proud is definitely a Colombian trait.  Hyrum's not the only crazy person who travels the globe with his flag.

Hyrum is in the middle. (My fault its fuzzy...)

We finally made it to the Louvre, and bought our museum pass to use for the next 2 days.  We luckily had a Rick Steves travel book with us, so we tried to go through and hit all the highlights in the museum since we couldn't just wander around for hours.  (Places to go!)  I was surprised that the famous glass pyramid is actually in the middle of an enclosed courtyard.

Venus de Milo, c. 100 BC.  From Greek island of Melos.

Hyrum on display.  (After some not-so-fancy editing of his arms...)

Apollo Gallery-- you get a glimpse of French castle life pre-Versailles.  The whole museum is pretty ornate, and this room kind of puts the Vatican museum to shame.  (Not in terms of art, but the over-the-top decor itself.)  

Similar to the Vatican, a lot of the art is HUGE.  This is "The Marriage at Cana" by Paolo Veronese.  Apparently, Jesus is in the middle turning water into wine.   

Another example of the ridiculous castle decor.  This is the ceiling. 

Another huge piece of art, "The Coronation of Napoleon" by Jacques-Louis David.  Ironically, we saw another copy of this painting the next day at Versailles (also done by the same artist--and just as big.)  

The Mona Lisa... not quite as big.  The Rick Steves book says that this room smells bad because of all the people there... and unfortunately the book wasn't wrong. 

Hyrum is imitating the statue by taking a picture of himself with his cell phone.  Maybe Greece first invented the  "selfie"?

So that was a lot of pictures.  But considering the museum has 12 miles of galleries, I think it's fairly modest...   After the museum, I took advantage of being pregnant to eat a little snack.  Who doesn't love having cheese and crackers in their purse??

On our way to the Orsay museum, we stopped by Laduree for some macaroons....  

...Strolled through the Tuileries Garden (used to be the gardens for the Louvre palace, the inside part is much more green!)...

... And crossed over the Seine River...

That's the Orsay in the background.  Since this museum didn't allow pictures, I can't post much.  But it was a much more enjoyable museum (to me) than the Louvre because it has all the famous art that I love.  It's primarily impressionist art and more modern stuff.  (Nothing ancient).  We saw the Birth of Venus (along with other random pieces of art I had to memorize for my Humanities class in college), and ballerina paintings from Degas, pointillism from Seurat, and waterlily scenes from Monet.  Plus Cezanne, Renoir, Manet, and my favorite, Van Gogh.  What's not to love??

Before we realized we couldn't take pictures, we took a few. This one didn't turn out for some reason, but I love this painting anyway--Starry Night over the Rhone.  (Okay, so maybe Hyrum did know he shouldn't take pictures.  But that doesn't stop him, usually.)

 The museum is in an old train station, so the whole middle section is open with huge arched ceilings.

From the Orsay we raced over to Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame, which are conveniently right near each other.  I've seen pictures of the stained glass in Sainte-Chapelle before, and I guess I was expecting more of a church.  You basically go up a really tiny staircase and find yourself in a small (compared to most churches) room with stained glass on all walls.  Nothing else to see besides the stained glass, and no where else to go besides this small room.  (I had the same feeling as in the Sistine Chapel---its very impressive art, but just a much different scale than you're expecting.)  So we sat for a while and enjoyed the stained glass, which becomes more amazing the longer you look at it.  The gothic church was built in just 6 years (compared to Notre Dame which took over 200).  The royalty worshipped there.  It contains 6500 sq feet of glass, 2/3 of which is original from the 13th century, and portrays over a thousand scenes from the Bible.  So my initial disappointment over the size dissolved as I took in all the detail.  

I found Notre Dame to be as impressive as any big church you find while traveling around Europe.  Nothing really stood out.  The gargoyles on the outside were cool, as well as some of the stained glass inside.  

Gothic arches on the inside.  You can see part of the alter. 

This is the rose-shaped window--original medieval glass.

gargoyles on the outside.

And for your viewing pleasure.... the hunchback of Notre Dame. 

In case you wanted a better view!  My husband is so willing to pose for anything.  And half of the ideas are his!

 After Notre Dame we walked around to the back of the church where I got lost and posed as a tourist. (Okay-- I wasn't actually lost, just really wanted to find a good place to eat!  I was starved.)

notice the street sign in the bottom left picture.  Kind of clever. 

Our last major stop for the day was the Arc de Triomphe.  This was Hyrum's favorite place in Paris.  (I might have been too tired to fully enjoy it...)  It's huge (165 ft high) and has great views of Champs-Elysees and Paris traffic in general.  

I just want to point out that after a full day of sight-seeing, and being pregnant, I still managed to climb the 284 steps to the top!  I felt each one, and could hardly breath at the top.  The going down (seen below) was much easier.

I could have watched this all day.  The arc is in the middle of a HUGE round-a-bout.  There are no lines on the street, and it seems that cars entering the circle have priority over cars already in it.  So you can see below the cars going "down" are entering the circle, and have to basically weave through cars going in different directions (who are stopped, and blocking traffic, but can't move forward because cars are driving in front of them).  It's a bit of a mess to see cars going in every direction.

This gives some perspective on how big the arc is. 

We ended the night with some more macaroons.  

Update: here are two pictures I originally included, but they got deleted.  Now blogger won't let me move them back up in order. They're from the Louvre-- one in the Egypt room, and the other is a view of the pyramid from inside.