Stone penises

Aug 16
This felt like the longest day…Although we only walked 14 km today, so it actually wasn’t the longest. First stop, the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa et al. The building is lovely, but there are too many people in it to stop and admire it. I bought skip-the-line tickets which allowed us to miss the waiting line, which was already 3 hours long by 10 am. That was just to get into the building, followed by another 45 minutes in line to see the ML. They are going to install moving sidewalks before the Olympics to move people by more quickly. As it is, there are multiple guards to keep you moving along…so in reality you get to pass by it, to say you have seen it, but you don’t really get to stop and look at it.

It’s hard to understand why it’s so famous, arguably now the most famous and most valuable painting in the world. It was stolen by a cleaner in 1911; he thought it should be returned to Italy so he walked out with it under his coat. It took the police two years to find it hanging in his apartment. It took the staff at the Louvre 2 days to notice it was missing…and then only because an art student was looking for it and asked where it was. Then they tried to hand a different painting in its place (John the Baptist), thinking that no-one would notice the difference. After it was found and returned, people started lining up to see it.

I thought the best part was the Assyrian art – bas reliefs and door carvings, and the remains of the medieval fort that was dug up when they excavated to build the new pyramid. The place where you can walk around is the original moat, which was not only filled with water, but also garbage and sewage…The well was dug in the middle of the moat, with obvious health consequences, which is reputedly why everyone started drinking wine instead. You can see where the masons who built the original walls signed their work with symbols – since they were paid by the piece, it was important to identify which ones were yours. Apparently, you would need to walk 19 km to see everything in the Louvre, so there is lots to come back for.

We also saw the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory, both of which seemed more remarkable to me than the ML. Somewhere in the world there must be quite a collection of stone penises, given the number of statues that were missing theirs. I was quite interested in Eunsol’s reaction…she didn’t really think it very nice to see all of those nudes, so I may have raised a little prude here.

Next stop was lunch – an excellent pizza and a banana split. I am reduced to eating like a teenager. As we walked along the street, we found a store selling macarons – which may turn out to be the highlight of the trip for her. They are the same price here as in Canada. Then we decided to give our feet a break by taking another circuit on the hop on hop off bus.

Last stop of the day was dinner on the Seine. Eunsol wanted a “fancy dinner” in France, so this was it. We caught the boat from the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and sailed away. Dinner was actually very nice…much better than I expected, and we sat near the window. The really nice thing was that there was no commentary – just looking out the window and eating. I had a great tomato salad with tomato sorbet on top, followed by salmon, and then an apricot cake. Eunsol had prawns, cod and a frozen strawberry layered dessert. She had bought herself a beret today and wore it to supper, so felt very sophisticated. I think I finally hit her idea of a visit to Paris.
As we were leaving the Eiffel Tower on our way to the Trocadero Metro Station, we passed by the National Dance Theatre. Out in front you can take tango lessons from some very well-built, tall, African men (for a small fee). No dance lessons for us, we just watched, but there’s something so very cosmopolitan about African men teaching Spanish dance in France.

Exhausted, back to the hotel. We have to get up early tomorrow to go to Versailles, and E is already asleep. I realize that I’ve missed a couple of days, but I’m hoping for some free time on Sunday to catch up. Having a smaller person to get organized at night tends to use up the time I usually spend writing.