Oh la la, the Louvre!

There are many nice and interesting paintings here (as you’d expect being the Louvre and all) but my fave was a painting of “Noah’s Ark” but unfortunately I can’t remember the artist of this piece. I just found it really interesting and beautiful with all the work that went into it.

We spent 6 hours wandering about the Louvre, looking at paintings, sculptures, relics, pottery, Egyptian bits and bobs, and down into the basement where you’re able to see the old fort walls of what use to be the old Louvre. It was lovely, but admittedly exhausting!

We had a small break before moving onto the Pompadour Centre. This is a modern art building, built with all the escalators etc on the outside, it’s not particularly attractive but it’s modern art and in some ways that says it all huh? We sat outside it for a little while just taking in the look of it all (it looks like a building from a Mario Party world, it has all these different colored tubes etc and you half expect Yoshi or Princess to pop out) It doesn’t cost to go into the main area of this centre, so we decided to go in. Once in, you’re limited to looking at about 3 stores (the others are on another level and you have to pay to get up there) So we had a quick look at a book shop and then a modern art shop full of rather nifty and entertaining appliances, we could have brought a few items from there… had we had a few grand with us… A quick ice cream and we then made our way to Sac re cur.

Sac re cur is an impressive place to visit to say the least, but it would be easy for one to be put off visiting just by the sheer steepness of the hill that you have to climb to get there! And as if the steepness isn’t bad enough once you get to the gates you’re met by, and I kid you not, 30 men all standing in a group trying to sell you crappy souvenirs and trying to grab your wrists and then make you a bracelet that you can then not get off and you have to pay for… We folded our arms against us and shoved through this crowd saying “No” to all the men that pushed themselves into our face, I felt sorry for the unsuspecting young tourists I saw having these bracelets made onto their wrists, but it was a case for every man for themselves! As we were pushing through this throng of incredibly annoying, incredibly pushy, incredibly rude men I kept repeating over and over again “NO” If I didn’t want a souvenir from the first 25 men why would I change my mind on the 26th? Anyhow, by the end I’d had enough and just yelled “NO” at one young man who tried to push himself in my direction. He became angry then and yelled “NO” at me and then “HOW DO YOU LIKE IT?” To which I gave him a dirty look and moved on. They can’t expect to be that rude to someone and then get crabby when that person becomes annoyed/rude back, its total harassment!

Anyway, that aside, it was quite a pleasant day, even the walk up the STEEP hillside wasn’t soooooo bad in the end. We got to the top and were able to see for miles! It was a lovely view of the city from here, you could see everything, and it was really relaxing to sit up here and just take in the city and relax in your own little corner. Very nice! We were getting pretty tired by now, so we made tracks home but as we did so made a detour to the Moulin Rouge which is a 10 minute walk away, it was tiny, but great to see it after seeing it in films and having heard of it, we were now really buggered so we head back to the hostel where we crashed out and fell asleep pretty quickly!

written by  Chris and Emily on July 30, 2009 from Paris, France
from the travel blog: Europe 2009
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