Trip Day 52 – Museum de Louvre

Well today is Monday and time to set my museum pass into action, and what better way than to hit the biggest museum in town first. So off into the metro I go and 5 stops from my hotel I am at the Louvre, I head into the side entrance and head for the museum pass line, well it is more like a polite gathering and within 5 minutes I am inside, It is 11am and I head up to the top floor to see how many people are lined up outside, since I cant see the end of the line I expect these people will have an hours wait, so if you are coming to the Louvre my big tip is organise a museum pass.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts how big this place is from the outside, well let me tell you it isn’t any smaller once you get inside, all of the artwork is spread out over 4 floors. and each level has 30 foot high ceilings, there is so much gilding, marble and painting on both walls and ceilings that you could take out the artwork and it would still be impressive.

The good thing is the Museum allows photography just no flash, so at least I can get some pics to post. The museum has a great collection of Statues and Egyptian artefacts, and a huge collection of French paintings, there are not a lot of renaissance painting, it seems the Museum de Orsey has this covered.

After 4 1/2 hours of wondering from room to room I have only covered floors 2 and 1 and there is still 0 and –1 to go, looks like the Louvre will be a 2 day outing. I did get to see the Mona Lisa though, it unfortunately is roped off and behind glass, the crowd is 5 deep in part to get a look, as with all of these sort of things it is smaller than I had expected.