Sunday in Paris - The Morning

What a day! We saw and did so much today, our first full one in Paris. There are so many pictures from Sunday - I am going to split them into a couple seperate posts. This first one will cover our morning at the Louvre.

As I mentioned before, the Musee du Louvre is free on the first Sunday of each month, and lucky for us - that is today!

We took the Metro to the Concorde stop and walked (slowly) though the Jardin de Tulleries and arrived at the Pyramid around 9:45am. The main entrance this morning was moved to one of the wings, so we were instructed to backtrack and then waited in line for about 20 minutes to enter. Our girl did well for most of this wait. There are two giant lions carved out of green stone guarding this entrance. I used them, along with the anticipation of seeing a statue with no arms (Venus de Milo) as conversation points to divert her attention (and mine) from the agony of the slow moving line. She proceeded to become mildly obssesed with the armless woman, asking over and over again if we are going to see her. With her interest piqued, I employed the scavenger hunt technique I had discussed in a previous post. As soon as we were in the building, she was charged with finding Venus. Before we found her, we needed to walk through the looooong hallway of Italian paintings. We breezed through this wing stopping briefly at the Mona Lisa. Photography is not allowed here - but I trust you all know what she looks like!
Our girl liked her smile, she thought it was "beautiful".

Our little one was simply amazing today. We walked for miles inside the Louvre, not even sitting for lunch (there was one open table, but no seats) and had no stoller. During the nealy four hours we spent there, she rarely complained at all.

What helped us keep her involved is the abudance of exhibits that are rather funny, when you think about it from a child's point of view. For example, most of the statues, like the famous Venus de Milo, are missing at least one body part, the egyptian wing is filled with sphinx, cats, lions and hyroglifics (our girl learned how to say that word and enjoyed making up stories based on the carved images of ducks, people, boats, and more on those ancient tablets). Here is a picture of her pointing to an exhibit that she thought was neat. Kids can have a blast inside this stately old place, if you allow them to focus on the fun, humorous and interesting-for-kids (the animals, etc) stuff that is on display.

Next post: Boating on the River Seine, visiting Notre Dame, and viewing Paris from atop the Eiffel Tower.


Jeff OWTK - live in Paris!
http://www.owtk.com