Le tour de la Louvre

We woke up, grabbed some breakfast...Starbucks here has chocolate pastries galore! I have never seen the kids so excited about Starbucks! Because it’s Sunday, and the last day of la Tour de France, many cafes and bakeries were closed today.

Then it was time for our Louvre tour. I have been before, but it is always amazing to see all of the artwork and learn new things. For example, when the pyramid was built in 1989 (to build a bigger entrance to accommodate the 4 million visitors per year, which has now grown to 9 million!), they excavated the original palace foundation, including the moat and drawbridge from 800 years ago! You can see the same stone mason markings similar to Notre Dame since the original Louvre palace was built around the same time. The Louvre did not become a museum until 1793, before which it was a palace and went through many iterations. A few key works that we saw were the Sphynx, the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, and of course, the Mona Lisa!

K studied art history all of 2nd grade, so she was very familiar with some of the artwork and artists. I previously forwarded a list to our guide so that she could point out those to K. K loved every minute of the tour and could not get enough! The guide was great at really including the kids, and even gave B a (silenced) iPad with Beyoncé and Jay Z’s new video shot in the Louvre, so that he could point out some of the art and rooms he saw in the video...a great trick! He did get tired and weary toward the end, but was very excited to see the Mona Lisa, and the statue of Apollo that appears to be taking a selfie!

We went to Lou Lou for lunch right outside in the gardens. I had really high expectations of a lovely lunch with champagne and white table cloths. Unfortunately, nature had another plan...the wind kicked up and covered us in dust and sand, as well as blowing and breaking glass stemware all over! But the food was delicious!

We bummed around a little bit after lunch, to Montmartre for K’s souvenir, and to the Shakespeare book shop for Patrick. Then we headed back to the hotel for a rest.

K’s favorite part of the day was seeing the Mona Lisa! And she learned that the Louvre used to be a palace. B’s favorite part had something to do with naked statues, but I won’t repeat it here!