The Louvre (large Mona Lisa storage device)

Going to Paris for the first time without seeing the Louvre at least once would probably be some form of cardinal sin (see yesterday's post for more interesting sinning you can do in Paris). To get it out of the way, we were just going to hop in, see Mona Lisa, and pop out for some tea, but then we got distracted by some art. Okay, I'm being all tongue-in-cheek here; we really did want to see all the other art here, but we did start with our favorite Da Vinci diva. Unfortunately, so did everyone else:


We didn't get a great look at it, but there are plenty of much better shots of it online. Afterwards, we wandered off to the sculpture parts of the Louvre, particularly the greek and roman sculpture. I particularly enjoy seeing emperor Hadrian looking at a bust of himself:


We also saw Da Vinci's famous Venus de Milo, which wasn't in the best of shape, all things considered.


There was even a bit more of the Parthenon here, though as you might remember from before, most of it is at the British Museum. (I'm sure there are some pillars in Greece, too.) After the Roman/Greek sculpture, we wandered into the basement where they had some parts of the original, medeival building that was there originally.


It was pretty cool that most of the structure is there. The original structure in that location dates from the 12th century, as a fort built by the French king of the time. The building above ground that's there now was mostly built in the 16th and 17th centuries and was the seat of government until Louis XIV moved to Versailles. It was still technically a royal palace until the revolution. I've noticed this about a number of museums, gardens, etc here; they were owned by the royalty right up until the revolution. Ah, the joys of beheading all your royalty. Anyway, because it used to be the royal palace, it contained the apartments of Napolean III:


After a lengthy tour and seeing a bunch of French royal opulence, we headed down to the Egyptian and Mesopotamian part of the building, which had some cool sculptures, Sphynxes, and many things with hieroglyphics and other ancient forms of writing. Particularly, they had the original code of Hammurabi:


"An eye for an eye" and all that. I'm impressed at how many things are just sitting out in the open, in the warm, humid air. The Mona Lisa was well protected, of course. Anyway, that was pretty much the high-level version of our tour.

We left and had ramen for lunch. Yep, we went to a ramen-ya in Paris, when that's something we could do any day of the week back home. But, it's comfort food for us. Not to mention it was interesting seeing a nearly identical ramen shop in Paris to the ones we're used to. They spoke Japanese, Chinese, French, and a bit of English. I think more people should be such polyglots. This led into an expensive shopping foray, since we're in Paris.


We hit up the big names: Prada, Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana, and others. Yeah, these are all Italian designers, though we did go to Comme des Garcons and Hermes, and looked in the windows of Givenchy and miu miu. It was a busy shopping day.

At the end of the day, we wanted to go to L'Atelier du Joel Robuchon, but I botched the reservation (accidentally called his other restaurant, the "Table", instead). After an unpleasant conversation with the maitre d, we went off to the Marais to find something else. With some great luck, we stumbled on a delicious southern French place:


For a hidden gem near Bastille, it was just fantastic. The waiter (there was only one) was very warm and friendly, and spoke great English. My favorite dish was grilled asparagus with prosciutto and shaved parmesan served warm over a bed of cold greens with a balsamic reduction. Or, as they called it, "grilled asparagus with parmesan" (except in French).

We got too caught up with other things to visit the Eiffel tower (even though it's open until midnight!), so we'll do that tomorrow before leaving.