SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Here it is Sunday morning, marking the beginning of our fourth week here, and we are getting going a bit earlier since today is the first Sunday of the month and the museums are free to everyone. So why not? We went off to the Louvre and spent about 4 hours there seeing some old things and some new. There were large numbers of people and the first audio player desk we went to was out of listening sets. So we went to another. This is the best way to visit the Louvre (or almost any other museum). You get introductory talks about the museum, departments, exhibitions, and then descriptions of selected works.









. First we went to the apartments of Napoleon III. What is nice about them is that the furnishings were almost all there at the time the apartment was created. Many chateaux that are open as museums do not have original or period furnishings, even though they may be very old.







After the apartments, we walked around on the first floor of the Richelieu Wing. There are three wings, Richelieu, Sully, and Denon. We came across an exhibition we had never seen before. It featured tapestries. There were twelve, one for each of the twelve months. After about 4 1/2 hours of walking around, we had had it. We went out and had tea at a café that over looked the square in front of the Palais Royal. Alexandria rated the hot chocolate as not bad, but could have been hotter.


We went to the place Andre Malraux where we witnessed a newly married couple being photographed. You never know what you will see in Paris. Notice the unusual place where my first photo was taken. A small piece of the bride's gown blew away and since she didn't seem to care, Alexandria picked it up and took it with us.










To get to our bus, we walked through the Palais Royal Gardens, a beautiful park just north of the Cours Carré of the Louvre.You may have seen pictures of the sculpture garden with the unusual pillars. See the photos below.









After the garden, we took the bus to the place de la République where we had dinner at one of our favorites, Chez Jenny. This is an Alsatian restaurant that features sauerkraut. Alexandria had the one with fish, and I had one of the traditional kinds. It is so copious that you don't need an appetizer. We had a good Alsatian white wine with it.



We took the bus back to the apartment, very tired after a full day.