Finally, we got our chance to visit the Louvre. After learning our lessons from the previous day, we woke up early to wait in a much smaller line just after opening time. The Louvre was absolutely amazing, and astonishing that so much priceless pieces can fit within one building. Once inside, we made a bee-line for the Mona Lisa, figuring that the lines would only get worse. Seeing one of the most famous paintings in history was awesome, but damn, there are a lot of people crowded into a fairly large room containing the relatively small painting. Directly to the left of the Mona Lisa room was the Madonna of the Rocks painting by Di Vinci, made famous by the book and movie “The Di Vinci Code”. After those two highlights, we left the Italian painters section and headed to see more of the sculptures and artifacts. This included the Egyptian collection, the Venus, Middle-Age sections, and other middle-east (Iran, Persia, Babylon, etc) collections. We also visited the closed-in courtyards that featured many famous statues, making for excellent photos in the natural light.
By this point our feet were killing us, so we decided to head back to the flat. After a few hours of recuperation, we invited Jean-Pierre and Antoine out for dinner as the least we could do for all their hospitality. We chose a local pizza and Italian restaurant near St. Paul. While I was not impressed with the food, the company and discussion was great! Oh yeah, the dessert of Crème Bulee was very good.
