Museum Day: Louvre and Musee d'Orsay

Here's a quick factoid for you all.  The first Sunday of every month is free national museum day.  So any national museums you get free admission!  Lauren and I being budget savvy girls, saved Sunday specifically for our cultural day.  We first decide to go in and knock out the Louvre, we figured it would be pretty crowded on this days so we attempted to get somewhat of an early start.  Which I think ended up being around 10am.  We took the subway and actually got off at the Louvre stop and were able to enter the museum from underground rather than waiting in a line outside in the cold.  The line actually moved quite fast and we may have waited around 10 minutes.  The first thing we did once we got past the entance was grab a Starbucks and head on our journey.  One great thing about the Louvre, although giant and massive, (that's what she said) they have it very well marked and signs pointing to the big attractions. Lauren and I scoped out the 4 statues and paintings that we wanted to see and off we went.  The first attraction we hit was the Winged Victory of Samothrace.  Name doesn't ring a bell?  Didn't for us either, but we have definitely seen it in a book or movie somewhere.

Next on the agenda was the mother of all mothers, the reason the Louvre is on the map (well maybe that is stretching it), ladies and gents may I present to you the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, MONA LISA

As I'm sure you've heard, the painting is actually quite small and it's enclosed into a glass case.  There is also a large crowd gathered around and it's pretty hard to make your way up to the front.  However I squeezed my way through and my camera has a pretty awesome zoom lens on it, papparazzi style, so I was able to snag a half decent picture!  Next up was the famous Venus de Milo which depicts Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty.  She might be a bit more attractive if she had all her limbs, I'm just sayin!

Last but not least we head for the Egyptian portion of the museum and for the life of me I can't find the name of the giant statue in the picture below.  I've been searching on the Louvre's website for the past 30 mintues and have given up!

I really like the shadowing in the second picture.  After we hit up all of the above we headed outside to the famous glass pyramid to get some shots of that.  Thats where we saw a massive line waiting outside in the cold, suckers!

Next up was the Musee d'Orasay which Lauren and I had heard was the most beautiful of all museums and everyone just ranted and raved about it.  This time we were the suckers as we stood in line outside in the cold for roughly an hour and a half!  We had the pleasure of being behind a Greek couple which I'm pretty sure hated me.  Some good people watching did take place however, we had to do something to keep us entertained!  Finally we get into the entrance and Lauren is basically shoved in from behind by an 80 year old woman!  Once we get inside we are pretty much less than thrilled.  Maybe because all of the hype and the fact we just waited over an hour we were expecting a lot more.  The museum used to be an old train station...here is a pic of the giant clock inside.

There are some pretty cool paintings inside though, Van Gogh's self portrait is actually located here along with some of his other works, but that one being the most popular.

The next pic is my fave, although gross, I just think it's hilarious!  And the fact that it looks almost like a photograph rather than a painting!  Ch ch ch check it out.

I'm not sure of the painters of the next series of photos, but I think they are all pretty famous and you may recognize a few of them.  I do know they include both Monet and Manet.

Well that about sums up our museum day, I'm sure drinks were had later on that night, don't ask where, I'm sure you already know the answer!