Paris – Day 3

Day 3 Itinerary: Musée du Louvre, Musée de l’Orangerie, Musée Guimet

We started our third day in Paris at the Louvre. Since the collection is so large, we reconciled ourselves to viewing only the highlights. Of course, these included the big three: Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and Venus de Milo. Brace yourselves, the Mona Lisa was actually bigger than I expected! We also made sure to see the Code of Hammurabi, The Palace of Sargon II and, for Allison, The Oath of the Horatii and The Raft of the Medusa. We cruised past a lot of paintings because we were still saturated from last summer’s exposure to various Italian museums.

We ate lunch at the Louvre cafeteria and then walked through the Tuileries gardens to the Orangerie Museum. Once again our museum pass let us skip the long line to buy tickets. The Orangerie was reopened in 2006 after 6 years of renovation. The 8 huge panels of Monet’s water lilies are displayed in two special oval rooms and are quite impressive.

After the Orangerie we staggered along the Seine (enjoying views of the Eiffle Tower) to the National Museum of Asian Art (Musée Guimet). Here we saw some Japanese prints are artefacts from ancient China, Korea, Cambodia and Japan. There were even a few pieces from Burma. After that we crossed back over the Seine on a pedestrian bridge and walked under the Eiffel Tower and down the Champs de Mars.

For dinner we we strolled along Rue Clar and assembled a picnic of baguette sandwiches, cookies and a 375 mL bottle of Bordeaux. We then went back to the Champs de Mars and enjoyed our picnic dinner while alternating between gazing at the Eiffel Tower in sunset colours and dodging the ball from a pick-up soccer game. When we got back to the hotel Mom’s pedometer read a whopping 25062 steps! We feel certain this is a personal best and it didn’t even include all the shuffling steps we took in museums. All told, we probably walked about the distance of a half marathon on day 3!