Paris day three - 13 September 2012
Wherein our intrepid adventures set forth into the vast spaces of the Louvre, hunting an elusive painting and discovering divers strange wonders.
Forget about space: the Louvre is big, really big. Also since we were here ten years ago, they've re-organised the place and put in escalators (and loos!). Which makes for an easier experience.
Now there is one painting I want to see and it's high up in a gallery far, far away. The painting is Vermeer's Lacemaker and ten years ago, the gallery of Dutch masterworks was closed for renovation. We consult the map and work our way up through galleries and escalators to the Dutch paintings, and guess what? The bloody gallery is closed. For renovation, again.
I swear, I'm trying one more time when we go to Paris again, and that's it. Looks like I will need to get my Vermeer fix in London.
So we wander through deserted galleries full of amazing medieval/renaissance paintings/tapestries/statues/you-name-it (including a blue glass hunting horn until we found a way out and found the winged Victory and finally The Raft
Of the Medusa, Liberty leading the people and a whole host of paintings that I consider old friends, including my favourite Ingres portrait. There sits Monsieur Bertin quietly in a corner, unremarked, until I greeted him. I suspect Iain and I were the only people in that packed gallery who looked at the other paintings hanging there. So many Davids! the Oath of the Horatii, Napoleon's sister, Pauline , the great, overwhelming (as it is meant to be) depiction of Napoleon's crowning Josephine.
We didn't get to the Mona Lisa or the early French and Italians, but that's for the next trip. Got to leave something for later.
Then off to Les Halles looking for lunch. Iain thought that there might be a food court, but that is an alien concept to the French mind. Long may it be so. We also discovered that a Centre d'Animation is not a animation film centre, but a gym.
Then we went for a wander after dinner an discovered a whole new area of shops and cafes right behind the flat. Hemingway was right: Paris is a movable feast.
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