Iconic Parisian Sites - the Louvre and the Catecombs

My granddaughter A and I had different goals for today. A wanted to see the catacombs and the sewers (which I knew were not handicapped accessible and which I wasn't that anxious to see anyway), but the sewers were closed.

My granddaughter

She was not interested in the Louvre, but I had visited it when I was in Paris in 1950 when I was 12, and I thought I should see it again. All I remember seeing in 1950 was the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace all lit up at night, so I thought I might see the Venus again. The internet said that the Winged Victory up a flight of steps and was not handicapped accessible so I wasn't sure if I would be able to see that.

I had told A that we could sleep in as I was not being picked up until 10:30, but I didn't mean to sleep in as much as we did. I woke up at 9:40. We got dressed and went to breakfast - had orange slices and a hard boiled egg and some cheese. A got sparkling water which. after the bubbles dissipated was kind of a shock - you think you are drinking regular water, and you are not.

I went out to the lobby and the guide was there. Her name was Hildegard and she was an art history major who could do any museum in France. But she had not known that I was on a scooter. That was a surprise to her.

I had to use the little lift down from the lobby to the street.

Bellman and granddaughter waiting for me to get down the single chair lift

A went out with us and showed the driver how to fold the scooter and the bell man insisted on giving me 3 bottles of water because he said it was going to be hot. And we started off.

The driver said he knew which was the handicapped entrance but when I looked it up later I realized that he did not take us to the handicapped entrance which is a special elevator under the pyramid. He also confided that he was going back to get A for her tour of the catacombs at 12:30. We got out and I put the scooter back together. The non-handicapped entrance had a little 2" step up which I lifted the scooter over.

I don't know whether Hildegard would have done some research if she had known I was using a scooter, but she had great difficulty finding elevators to get to the level she wanted to get to and she seemed to have a hard time actually paying attention to the signs. She would try to find her way to the place she wanted to be and would fail and would go ask a Louvre guard, and they would end up leading us to the elevator and riding up or down with us and walking us through to the next elevator etc.

I told Hildegard that I wanted to see Venus de Milo and the painters that influenced the impressionists like Caravaggio, Courbet, David, Delacroix and Ingres. Our goals were not in complete congruence. She wanted to give me a whole complete lecture on each painting about the history and technique of the paintings (which was her training), and I just wanted to look at them and then look at some other things.

First we had to go through security. We went by a lot of fancy shops (and there was a money changing place too) where I didn't have a chance to shop if I had wanted to shop. Then we were under the pyramid.

Under the pyramid

She carefully explained each of the significant paintings, and I tried to take photos without people's heads or light reflections in the painting surface. We started with Pierre Paul Prudhon's painting of Napoleon's wife. (I didn't get a good photo of it.) Next we viewed

Grande Odalisque by Ingres

Ingres added five extra vertebrae to her spine (on purpose I guess). Above us on the ceiling were four paintings on the history of France.

One of four paintings about the history of France - this one is Napoleon

We looked at Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa by Antoine-Jean Gros which Hildegarde said was propaganda. And we also looked at the Coronation of Napoleon.

The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault

was next. Hildegarde was pleased to point out the two diagonal lines (pyramidal shapes) in the painting, the two extra black men on the raft, and the man snacking on other man - cannibalism. She said that the sailors from the Medusa were only on the raft for about 20 hours but it was really 13 days. We then spent a long time talking about

Le 28 Julliet: La Liberte guidant le peuple by Eugene Delacroix

She said that this man in the black top hat was a Delacroix's self portrait, but apparently that idea has been discredited.

Formerly thought to be a Delacroix self portrait

She also said that this person was a real person.

The revolutionary urban worker, as exemplified by the boy holding pistols.

She didn't tell me anything about his picture - I just thought it was interesting.

A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother by Eugene Delacroix

We passed by the two princes with little discussion

The Children of Edward by Paul Delaroche

Joan of Arc at the Coronation of King Charles VII in Reims Cathedral by Jean-Auguste-Dominique INGRES

Bust of a Roman

I took this photo on the way to another section of the museum. We were going to the Italian section.

The Pastoral Concert (ca. 1510) by Giorgione or Titian inspiration for Manet 1862 painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe which caused such a sensation

Looking out the window

Portrait of a Venetian woman known as The Beautiful Nani by Tintoretto.

We both really liked the detail in Tintoretto's painting.

The palm reader who is stealing his ring

One of the mirrors in the Louvre

Spring - painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo from the Four Season series

Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione by Raphael

After about an hour, my back started to hurt, and I tried to hurry her along. But she insisted that I see the Mona Lisa, and there was a special path for wheelchairs that put us around in the front of the multitudes standing 12 deep in front of the painting.

Mona Lisa

Then she took me to the Roman section to see Venus and there were several other items there of interest.

Attic Red-Figure Calyx Krater known as the "Niobid Krater"

Mural up on the ceiling

Plaque of the Ergastines, East Side Frieze, Parthenon

Venus de Milo

Murals from Pompeii

Hildegarde insisted on showing me

Sleeping Hermaphroditus

It is apparently one of the 13 things that you must see in the Louvre. If you count the pyramid, I have seen 8 of them. I missed #1 The Winged Victory of Samothrace, but I saw
3. Venus de Milo
4. The Raft of the Medusa
5. Liberty Leading the People
6. The Coronation of Napoleon
7. Sleeping Hermaphroditus
9. I.M. Pei’s Pyramid
12. Grande Odalisque by Ingres
13. The Mona Lisa
Now it was almost 1300 and was time to leave. How to find the way out? She did as before and someone led us to the elevator to get down to the exit, but Hildegard said that it did not work. We could see where we needed to go - there was a flight of steps down. So I suggested she go down and ask at the bottom. I was sitting on the scooter at the top of the steps and a nice young couple said, Did I need help? I said that I thought I could go down the steps if he could carry the scooter down. So that's what he did and I went down the steps. Crisis averted.

We went out onto the street and there was a taxi pulling away which A could have caught, but Hildegard was too slow, so we went across the street to a taxi rank and got a taxi back to the hotel. She paid for the taxi (which was €12) and I gave her a €20 tip which according to the chart is appropriate for a half day tour, but I think now is probably too much.

We got the scooter back together and the bellman took me back to my room and I gave him $5.00 After a bit A got back from her tour of the catacombs. Pictures were not allowed there. She went out to lunch by herself and went to a local restaurant and had fish and chips. She had heard a lot of anecdotal evidence from people with gluten allergies/intolerances and they have said the bread in France doesn’t trigger any reaction in them. She decided to test this at lunch and had her first regular bread in ten years.

Her first bread

And she had no reaction to the bread, so for the whole rest of the trip she could eat bread, croissants, pastries, pasta,, pizza, and regular sandwiches.

Hotel bar

About 6:40 I thought we might go to dinner in the hotel restaurant and really enjoy it this time as I could not do before. Once my back gets painful, I can't find a comfortable position and then if I am also hungry, I get nauseated but I can't really eat much. But the restaurant did not open until 7, so we sat and waited. I said I did not want to sit in the little metal chairs in the courtyard (although it is nice to be out there and watch the pigeons walking on everyone's tables) so I think they put us in the bar. This time, I took a photo of the menu (which was about the same as last night), but what we get doesn't really match the menu most of the time because the specials of the day are not on it.

Menu

Signature menu

I got cranberry juice to drink which costs €5. First they gave us a pre-appetizer of

Fish paste in a waffle cone with dried olives sprinkled around them on the dish

Then we both had the

Chicken and prawn risotto which had very salty water cress on top.

It was very good - I ate one of A's prawns as she apparently does not like them much and she ate one of my pieces of chicken. Then A had a

Lemon tart

She described it as follows:
The lemon tart was wonderful. I cannot praise the lemon tart enough. There was some white fluff thing on top that didn’t have much flavor so I think it was just there for texture. The bottom was nice and cakey and there were three little spots that were extra lemony and caught me by surprise the first time I ate that part. I found that it was complimented well by the raspberry puddles on the side. I could’ve licked the plate it was so good but I decided that was very against decorum.

I had

Couleur cafe with peanut, corn biscuit and chocolate.

There was popcorn and there were also walnuts and little pieces of cornbread. A's dinner was €32 and mine was €35 (plus the cranberry juice)

Receipt

A and me in the mirror going to the room

Tomorrow we have a walking tour of the Left Bank through Discover Walks and I have been trying to find out where we are to meet. I finally phoned someone and she told me the address which I wrote down. And then I went to the concierge and ordered a taxi for 9:30 (to get to the 10:00 tour.)
Granddaughter's full report on Day 16