La Louvre, with its glass pyramid greeting you…4 levels, 700
meters long – that’s almost half a mile.
It’s so big, one guide book tip said it would take 4 months to see it
all. You have to pick and choose what
you’re going to spend your time on there, so we went for the big name stuff
first. The entrance hall is 2 levels
below the street – up the steps into the Denon wing, past the sculpture Winged
Victory, and into the European section, straight to the Italian paintings to
see the Mona Lisa. I’d heard she’s
small, but she wasn’t as small as I’d thought she’d be – closer to poster-sized,
but maybe not quite. The painting is
behind a glass barrier with people pressed in several layers deep to catch a
glimpse of the DaVinci masterpiece. I’m
glad we got there as the museum opened because the room gets even more crowded
as the day wears on. From there we took
in the European decorative arts and many more paintings, then through the
galleries Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, including the Venus de
Milo. Three hours was enough for us, so
off we went up the Champs Elysees to see the famous street. We had to duck down a side street to find a
more reasonable place to eat lunch, but after that we made a beeline for the
Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon’s monument to his troops and all of their great
military victories, especially the Battle of Austerlitz. The Arc is 165 feet tall, 130 feet wide – the
biggest triumphal arch in the world. The
French national parades start and end at the Arc with a moment of silence. There’s also a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
there with a ceremony each day to light a flame of remembrance. We climbed the 284 steps up to the
observation deck at the top and got a stunning view of the city in all directions. We also got an eye-opening view of what Paris
traffic is like in the circle surrounding the Arc – what a madhouse, but
somehow it works.
By then is was mid-afternoon – we headed back towards the
flat, but not before we saw military aircraft flying in formation, a few at a
time, over the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Elysees. We weren’t sure why, but figured to had
something to do with Bastille Day being on Thursday. The first set of planes were fighter jets,
much like the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds at home. There was an AWACs plane, a C-130 transport
plane, and an air-refueling jet, among others.
After we watched several sets go by, we continued on our way to the Pont
de l’Alma bridge. Off to one side, I saw
what looked like the flame of the Statue of Liberty, so we went to
investigate. That’s exactly what it was –
the Flame of Liberty – marking a memorial for the street tunnel below where
Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
Our last stop for the day was the Musee de les Egouts de Paris – the museum
of the Paris sewer system! Here we got
to walk through several hundred yards of sewer tunnels, reading about the
development, evolution, and history of the oldest and longest underground sewer
system in the world. It was kind of
stinky in there, but it was interesting and informative. We could see where the Metro trains run,
compared to the sewer lines (the Metro is under the sewers), and how they have
engineered it to prevent it from overflowing into the Seine when the water
level rises like it did last month with the flooding they had here. We also got a look at the kinds of equipment
they use to clean the sewer lines, from dredges to rolling balls almost as big
as the pipes, that push the sand and sediment out of the way. We didn’t see any sewer rats, but you could
buy one at the museum’s gift shop at the end of the tour. We declined. ;-)
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