We were supposed to go to Fontainbleu today, but decide to switch it with our Louvre day instead. We check our Paris museum passes, which direct us to a secret entrance for pass holders in the Richelieu passage. No lines! We wait maybe two minutes for an audio guide before breezing in through the ticket entrance. We didn't have to wait in a single line.
The Louvre itself is a bit overwhelming at first. It's inside an old royal palace, and I think it's bigger than Versailles. At least, it took a heck of a lot longer to walk around. We decided to nix out the top floor because there was no way we were doing everything in one day. That still left us with an enormous chunk of museum to explore. We get through all the antiquities - Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Etruscan etc etc and through a tiny bit of the Italian paintings. Throughout this enormous tour we decide to stop and get lunch. Finding the cheaper cafe was a chore. They had also closed off the balcony because it wasn't "tourist season" yet, so there were quite a few people waiting for tables. When we finally sit our aching feet down at a table, they tell us they're out of everything we could possibly want on the menu. Skip nabs the last ham and cheese, and I take a salad. Once more, the sandwich is completely dry and tasteless. No mayo, mustard, nothing. The French like their sandwiches bone dry. It's quite unappetizing.
We eat what we can stomach before heading back out into the museum. We cover quite a huge part that day even though we had to make a pit stop to exchange my audio guide when it froze. We didn't see the Mona Lisa that day, but we did see basically all the other important works - Winged Victory at Samothrace, Venus De Milo, and others I can't really remember right now. We leave around 5:45, make a pit stop at the outside of Notre Dame (very pretty, and imposing) before getting ice cream on the way back to our hotel. Dinner consists of more salad because that's all the French eat. I'm having horrid Florida flashbacks at this point, but that's another story.
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