The beautiful La Joconde- Mona Lisa, she really did look quite serene with her secret smile. It must be pretty nice to have an entire wall set up in the middle of a giant room in the biggest art museum in the world. A bit lonely too for such a pretty woman I'd imagine
I especially loved the building itself. The grand sweeping staircases the statues and roof decoration, The windows and wall trimmings. And the huge sky lighted windows that seemed to span for an age down the long halls.
One of my favourite roofs. The artwork surrounds such a detailed piece of wood carvings and all the scenes are two fold. The painting describes a story, so does the wood a fake gold!!! Its also beautiful because it was far away, normally im not a fan of such grandeur, but this was simply divine when viewed from below.
I especially loved seeing the painters who were painting copies of some of the more famous art works, one woman happened to mention her daughter while we were complimenting her on her canvas. It turns out there is a 5 year old master running about the Louvre, showing the older painters where they need to add more detail to their works. I wish I had've met such a talented prodigy.
The mother of the 5 year old master painter. Her work was simply splendid in terms of capturing the artists representation of the model. I only wish i hadn't been so tired and enquired more about why she choose that painting in particular.
Again as i walked into the first long hallway inside the building i had a certain attack of deja vu- I remember myself running along the hallway lined with paintings, only this time i wasnt running from someone but rather i was trying to find something quite desperately. I wonder if i was a french spy/ james bond in another life... who knows!
The hall i dreamt i was running through, even the people
shuffling about were there. I remember being so frustrated at their slow
paces when everything was depended on finding this thing... cool huh :)
Joanna and I spent hours inside the Louvre, wandering and gazing and discussing pictures, jewellery, statues and pottery- But we began to realise how exhausted we were and so opted to head into the underground shopping centre at the entrance to the Louvre. It was hear that we snapped some photos refuelled with yummy foods and discovered some quirky shops! My favourite being one that specialised in artistic toilet paper.
Imagine the joy of wiping your butt with the american bank notes! We however simply took advantage of the free toilets there- a test drive facility perhaps- and left. Because who has the money to buy customised TP these days?
We also had lots of fun trying to get a good photo in front of the bottom point of the glass pyramid, lots of people kept getting in my way and then finally a tiny window of human less space opened up and after 10 minutes of trying we had a photo worth keeping :)
The small window of photo opportunity Joanna and I had inside the Louvre shopping centre
At the end of the day Joanna and I decided to give into our girly needs and go shopping- alas no purchases but we did come across a very talented homeless artist and his sausage dog. As well as come to find that MacDonald's does a very amazing box of macaroons from mccafe. We attempted to go out that night, and had a wonderful Tibetan meal after getting lost and using all the battery on our cameras up. So alas no photos of our evening- i did however ask a random man (who was dressed like a waiter) for a table- much to the amusement of the entire restaurant. In my defence he saw us enter and rose to greet us. What was i supposed to expect?
His self portrait. I would have loved to have sat with him a while and chatted about him and his life. But i didnt want to be ranted at in a language i couldnt understand and unfortunately i was not brave to meet him.
Fin.
