Paris- part II
Monday, the 29th of August 2005
This day was thought to be the typical tourist day in Paris with visits to the Louvre and the Eiffel tower. So, like always, we woke up really early, used the underground and got off at the Louvre station. We were quite surprised that the price of the ticket for the museum was quite cheap (especially compared to other museums we had already visited during our adventure through the centre of Europe) but we were going to be even more surprised with the size of the place!! We already knew that before being turned into a museum, the Louvre was the biggest Royal Palace in Europe but we were still impressed! Once inside the museum we saw a piramyd of glass which I found quite weird as I definitely wasn’t expecting to see such a thing inside an old museum but I read that it actually allows the visitors to see all the historic buildings that surround it and at the same time illuminates the service area for tourists on the underground. We had four entrances we could choose to initiate our tour and we chose one that lead to a part of the Louvre where you could see some sculptures. We saw lots of sculptures with different sizes, colours, motifs and from different periods in history. I’m always quite fascinated by sculptures and how can someone trasnform a block of stone or marble into a perfect figure of a woman, animal or whatever. We spent some time observing everything and then moved on to see some art objects such as jewelry, old furniture, tapestries among other things. An impressive thing was the collection of tiaras and diamonds in one of the rooms. Afterwards we went to see some of Napoleon’s rooms and let me tell you, that’s what I call luxury!! Especially those huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling...now that’s what good illumination is all about. Afterwards we started our tour through the painting exhibitions..the collections in this department cover the history of European painting from the mid 13th century to the mid 19th century and were divided into three main groups: the French school, the Italian and Spanish Schools (in this part I saw a painting of a part of Lisbon -Belém- by a Portuguese painter) and the Northern European Schools (German, Flemish and Dutch schools)..we saw dozens and dozens of paintings!! Some were quite impressive, either by it’s size (some paintings wouldn’t even fit in my bedroom!!) or by the precision of the work. But obviously, the painting we were more interested in seeing was the incredibly famous and well known MONA LISA. And it wasn’t hard to find or distinguish it from the other paintings, there was like a crowded circle in front of the painting (and the Japanese photographers flashing the painting like crazy is NOT a myth, I checked it with my own eyes)!! I managed to get to the front of the painting (you know that being small also has some advantages!) and took the usual photo (I know I’m a clichè but who cares!?) but it also got me thinking that some paintings around Mona Lisa were way imponent and magestic when compared to Da Vinci’s painting. So why was this the only painting that everybody was desperate to see?? Is it because it’s surrounded by mistery and some sort of unanswered questions about who the lady is? Maybe...
Afterwards we still managed to see some Egyptian Antiquities by following a chronological circuit, from the earliest times to Cleopatra and a thematic circuit illustrating certain aspects of Egyptian civilisation and close to the end we also saw two rooms and an archaelogical circuit presenting the history and architectural development of the Louvre palace.
I have no idea how much time we must have spent inside the Louvre but it must have been around 4 hours and we didn’t even manage to visit a third of everything that we could have seen!! And we walked a lot inside it!! Later we were told that during the time we spent inside the museum there were also another 3.000 people with us. Well, I couldn’t have imagined it as the place is soooo huge that there are never too many people inside one room!
After having lunch in a place nearby we decided to visit the Eiffel tower but...to save some metro tickets we decided to go by foot from the Louvre to the Eiffel tower!! But it must have taken us about two hours because it was soo incredibly hot and we were already exhausted from walking an average of 10 kms per day. But still we managed to take beautiful pictures and we even saw the “Flame of Freedom” which is a memorial to the fighters of the French Resistance during the second world war (as it was explained to us on our boat trip of the previous day). What we didn’t know is that below that flame is a tunnel and it was only when we saw some writtings and flowers for Lady Diana close to the memorial that we realised that it was in that tunnel that the princess of England died in 1997. Otherwise I could have never remembered it. And we also passed by the “Place de la Concorde” which is a huge square where Antoinette was killed (they cut off her head). From that square you can also see the Arch of Triumph at the distance.
When we got to the Eiffel Tower, as expected, there was a line to get in but twenty minutes later we were already waiting for the elevator to take us all the way to the top. At first, Ricardo wasn’t so keen on going all the way up because he’s afraid of heights so he wanted to stay on the second floor! But I said there was no chance of me going to the Eiffel tower and not visit the last floor and see the view from up there and since I knew he wouldn’t let me go on my own, he went too. And when we were again with our feet on the ground, he agreed that it had been a good idea to go up there because we took amazing photos (probably the best ones in Paris).
Since it was already 18.00 we decided that it was better to take the underground and meet Hélène since we were going to have dinner together at the Mexican restaurant. The evening turned out to be really pleasant, we managed to talk a lot (and she brought me a bag full of slams!!), the restaurant was really nice and the food was even better (I can now say that I am offically addicted to nachos!!) and she promised she’d visit me one day in Lisbon!! All I can say is that I’ll definitely go back to Paris one day too. There’s still so much I want too see (being Versailles one of them). While planning the interrail Ricardo and I had thought about keeping one day to go to Normandy and visit the beaches of the D day (since we’re both really fond of History) but while in Paris we agreed that it was better if we spent the last day also in Paris, visiting the Arch of Triumph among other things and leave Normandy for another trip to France, where we would have more time to explore everything rather than just a quick visit in a day!
Also, that day we also went to the train station to buy our tickets back to Lisbon. We bought the ticket to Hendaye (we were going to do that journey during the night time which saves us from paying an extra day at the hotel!) and from Hendaye to Lisbon. We thought the ticket to Lisbon would cost us around 30 euros (since that was the price we paid from Lisbon to Hendaye) but it ended up costing us around 14 euros which we thought was quite convenient since we could use that money on something else! What we didn’t know was that the woman had charged us the wrong price but that’s something for the following day... All in all, we still had the entire day of tomorrow to get to know another part of Paris...
One famous sculpture
Me close to a sculpture Ricardo said was as sinister as me
ME in the rooms of Napoleon
The view of one of the windows at the Louvre (the arch you see is the arch of triumph of the carroussel- or something!)
Mona Lisa
The glass piramid with Ricardo
The smallest building in Paris
The Concorde square
The Flame of Liberty
The two of us with the Eiffel Tower on the background
The view from the Eiffel Tower
The view from the Eiffel Tower II
View III
View IV
This day was thought to be the typical tourist day in Paris with visits to the Louvre and the Eiffel tower. So, like always, we woke up really early, used the underground and got off at the Louvre station. We were quite surprised that the price of the ticket for the museum was quite cheap (especially compared to other museums we had already visited during our adventure through the centre of Europe) but we were going to be even more surprised with the size of the place!! We already knew that before being turned into a museum, the Louvre was the biggest Royal Palace in Europe but we were still impressed! Once inside the museum we saw a piramyd of glass which I found quite weird as I definitely wasn’t expecting to see such a thing inside an old museum but I read that it actually allows the visitors to see all the historic buildings that surround it and at the same time illuminates the service area for tourists on the underground. We had four entrances we could choose to initiate our tour and we chose one that lead to a part of the Louvre where you could see some sculptures. We saw lots of sculptures with different sizes, colours, motifs and from different periods in history. I’m always quite fascinated by sculptures and how can someone trasnform a block of stone or marble into a perfect figure of a woman, animal or whatever. We spent some time observing everything and then moved on to see some art objects such as jewelry, old furniture, tapestries among other things. An impressive thing was the collection of tiaras and diamonds in one of the rooms. Afterwards we went to see some of Napoleon’s rooms and let me tell you, that’s what I call luxury!! Especially those huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling...now that’s what good illumination is all about. Afterwards we started our tour through the painting exhibitions..the collections in this department cover the history of European painting from the mid 13th century to the mid 19th century and were divided into three main groups: the French school, the Italian and Spanish Schools (in this part I saw a painting of a part of Lisbon -Belém- by a Portuguese painter) and the Northern European Schools (German, Flemish and Dutch schools)..we saw dozens and dozens of paintings!! Some were quite impressive, either by it’s size (some paintings wouldn’t even fit in my bedroom!!) or by the precision of the work. But obviously, the painting we were more interested in seeing was the incredibly famous and well known MONA LISA. And it wasn’t hard to find or distinguish it from the other paintings, there was like a crowded circle in front of the painting (and the Japanese photographers flashing the painting like crazy is NOT a myth, I checked it with my own eyes)!! I managed to get to the front of the painting (you know that being small also has some advantages!) and took the usual photo (I know I’m a clichè but who cares!?) but it also got me thinking that some paintings around Mona Lisa were way imponent and magestic when compared to Da Vinci’s painting. So why was this the only painting that everybody was desperate to see?? Is it because it’s surrounded by mistery and some sort of unanswered questions about who the lady is? Maybe...
Afterwards we still managed to see some Egyptian Antiquities by following a chronological circuit, from the earliest times to Cleopatra and a thematic circuit illustrating certain aspects of Egyptian civilisation and close to the end we also saw two rooms and an archaelogical circuit presenting the history and architectural development of the Louvre palace.
I have no idea how much time we must have spent inside the Louvre but it must have been around 4 hours and we didn’t even manage to visit a third of everything that we could have seen!! And we walked a lot inside it!! Later we were told that during the time we spent inside the museum there were also another 3.000 people with us. Well, I couldn’t have imagined it as the place is soooo huge that there are never too many people inside one room!
After having lunch in a place nearby we decided to visit the Eiffel tower but...to save some metro tickets we decided to go by foot from the Louvre to the Eiffel tower!! But it must have taken us about two hours because it was soo incredibly hot and we were already exhausted from walking an average of 10 kms per day. But still we managed to take beautiful pictures and we even saw the “Flame of Freedom” which is a memorial to the fighters of the French Resistance during the second world war (as it was explained to us on our boat trip of the previous day). What we didn’t know is that below that flame is a tunnel and it was only when we saw some writtings and flowers for Lady Diana close to the memorial that we realised that it was in that tunnel that the princess of England died in 1997. Otherwise I could have never remembered it. And we also passed by the “Place de la Concorde” which is a huge square where Antoinette was killed (they cut off her head). From that square you can also see the Arch of Triumph at the distance.
When we got to the Eiffel Tower, as expected, there was a line to get in but twenty minutes later we were already waiting for the elevator to take us all the way to the top. At first, Ricardo wasn’t so keen on going all the way up because he’s afraid of heights so he wanted to stay on the second floor! But I said there was no chance of me going to the Eiffel tower and not visit the last floor and see the view from up there and since I knew he wouldn’t let me go on my own, he went too. And when we were again with our feet on the ground, he agreed that it had been a good idea to go up there because we took amazing photos (probably the best ones in Paris).
Since it was already 18.00 we decided that it was better to take the underground and meet Hélène since we were going to have dinner together at the Mexican restaurant. The evening turned out to be really pleasant, we managed to talk a lot (and she brought me a bag full of slams!!), the restaurant was really nice and the food was even better (I can now say that I am offically addicted to nachos!!) and she promised she’d visit me one day in Lisbon!! All I can say is that I’ll definitely go back to Paris one day too. There’s still so much I want too see (being Versailles one of them). While planning the interrail Ricardo and I had thought about keeping one day to go to Normandy and visit the beaches of the D day (since we’re both really fond of History) but while in Paris we agreed that it was better if we spent the last day also in Paris, visiting the Arch of Triumph among other things and leave Normandy for another trip to France, where we would have more time to explore everything rather than just a quick visit in a day!
Also, that day we also went to the train station to buy our tickets back to Lisbon. We bought the ticket to Hendaye (we were going to do that journey during the night time which saves us from paying an extra day at the hotel!) and from Hendaye to Lisbon. We thought the ticket to Lisbon would cost us around 30 euros (since that was the price we paid from Lisbon to Hendaye) but it ended up costing us around 14 euros which we thought was quite convenient since we could use that money on something else! What we didn’t know was that the woman had charged us the wrong price but that’s something for the following day... All in all, we still had the entire day of tomorrow to get to know another part of Paris...
One famous sculpture
Me close to a sculpture Ricardo said was as sinister as me
ME in the rooms of Napoleon
The view of one of the windows at the Louvre (the arch you see is the arch of triumph of the carroussel- or something!)
Mona Lisa
The glass piramid with Ricardo
The smallest building in Paris
The Concorde square
The Flame of Liberty
The two of us with the Eiffel Tower on the background
The view from the Eiffel Tower
The view from the Eiffel Tower II
View III
View IV