Paris with Laura: Day Two

Medieval Louvre.

Our second day in Paris started by going to the Louvre. Because we hadn't bought the Museum Pass this time, we had to wait in the "normal" security line and it took about 45 minutes to an hour to get in. Fortunately, we used the underground entrance so we didn't have to stand outside in the rain! Once inside, we started with the sections on the "medieval" Louvre. The Louvre was originally built by King Philip II Augustus in about 1190 as a fortress but later became a royal residence until Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles in 1678. Part of the foundations of the medieval Louvre still exist in the basement of the museum and that's what we went to see.

Laura in front of the pyramid.

We also decided to pay extra to see the special exhibit on Leonardo da Vinci's last major work, Saint Anne. (We couldn't take pictures, so here's the Wikipedia picture of it.) It was a very cool exhibit, with lots of Leonardo's sketches for the work, later copies of the painting by his students, and original letters and inventory books dealing with the composition and later ownership of the work. After that, the three of us split up to spend a little time seeing what we wanted to. I raced up to the Mona Lisa room just to be able to say I've seen it. I got a glimpse of it across the room and over the heads of hundreds of people who were all jostling each other trying to see it. I thought I wanted to see more of the Italian Renaissance rooms, but after the da Vinci exhibit, I was Renaissance-d out. It didn't help that it was all so crowded, too. So I met up with Lisa and Laura, we got lunch at a cafe in the basement of the Louvre (after another long wait in line), and ate our sandwiches while walking across the river to the Musee d'Orsay.


We waited in line (again) but spent about two hours inside the museum. I saw some different stuff than last time, like some of the early 19th-century Symbolist works; a display on the construction of Paris' opera house in the 1870s, and some mid-19th-century architectural drawings inspired by contemporary Egypt. To be honest, though, I was a little tired of art so I spent a lot of time sitting in the main court decompressing! Eventually, we all met up, took the Metro to the train station, and left for Rennes around 5 o'clock.