We overslept our alarm, missed our timed entry at the Louvre. But it actually all worked out and turned into a great day. We began with a visit to the Musee de l’Orangerie. The museum was built to display Monet’s Water Lilies. The panels are enormous and stunning in person. From there, we walked the length of the formal Tuileries Gardens, 500 meters, to the Louvre at the other end. We discovered that they let us in a side door since we’d missed our reservation time and it felt like it was likely a lot faster to enter than the actual reserved line. We had a few things we wanted to see at the Louvre - finding them was quite a challenge. The Louvre is enormous and houses 35,000 pieces of art in its 652,300 square feet. We walked 8000 steps in the Louvre and saw the da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory sculptures from ancient Greece, Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Guiding the People” of the second French Revolution, and the opulent Napoleon’s Quarters. The building itself, a former palace, is incredible (lots of decorated ceilings, marble everywhere, etc. and it also has beautiful interior courtyard sections featuring statues moved from the country palace. I could spend every day for a week at the Louvre and still not see everything. I’m so glad we had a chance to visit and get a taste of its incredible collection. We had a delicious Thai dinner near our hotel and wrapped up the night going to a fancy nightclub.
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