Well, they got us up bright and early again today and we were off to the Louvre, getting in pretty fast just when they opened. The first thing we visited was the famous Mona Lisa, which is actually a pretty small, brownish painting and not really very interesting unless you get to spend some time up close studying it.
We walked through several galleries of medieval paintings to get to the Mona Lisa, but really didn't spend a lot of time looking at them. From there we went to the extensive Egyptian collection and looked at Assyrian pottery, Etruscan art, sarcophogi, statues, sphinxes, and stellae, some over 5000 years old. Marching ourselves down to the sub-basement, we saw the original walls of the first castle which was built on this site,and walked around in the moat.
By noon the museum was so crowded you couldn't breath or move, so we left and had lunch in the Tuilieries garden while we watched the birdies beg for crumbs and the African man trying to sell us 5 mini Eiffel Towers for 1 euro.
We took the metro up to the Arc de Triomphe and hiked up the stairs to the top where we could watch the traffic coming into the circle from 8 different spikes and cars trying to get out of the circle and motorcycles zipping in and out between everyone else--what a zoo! Grandpa took the elevator, but the rest of us hiked up.
When we got home Ryan ran in and took off his shoes and got a big,, deep splinter in the ball of his foot. GG and Grandpa took turns working on removing it, but it was hard to dig out, so finally we had Ryan soak his foot in hot water and some of the splinter came out. Now we think we have most of it out and will check on it again tomorrow.
In the meanwhile, Grandpa's lower legs have turned bright red and he thinks it is because his socks are too tight over his ankle, so he cut off about an inch of the top of his sock. We are hoping things get back to normal on this too.
Everyone was starving by 4pm, so we got out the leftover spaghetti and gobbled it up. We ate more spaghetti this afternoon than we did for dinner last night. GG is waiting to see if we want dinner too.
Every day on the way home from our outing we stop at the grocery store and buy more juice, iced tea, bread and croissants, because somehow we keep running out of these things. Now we are out of cookies and fruit too, so GG will have to go back for those things.
Tell the kids I felt the same way about the Mona Lisa. Disappointed it was so small. Was expecting it to be much larger. But I loved the rooms decorated for Napoleon. Last night Rusty and I watched a movie from netflix called"Three Days to Kill" with Kevin Costner. He's been been a special agent his whole career and now dying from cancer. His wife and daughter live in Paris he returns there. Needless to say he's contacted to do one last job there in Paris. Great scenery of Paris. But lots of violence. But I like Costner and good story between him and his daughter.
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