To the Louvre... sorta

It's a long story. Imagine taking 100,000 strangers speaking 100 different languages. Now imagine squeezing them all into a building that's 90 degrees inside and has 10,000 steps and you begin to get a picture of the Louvre. Honestly- I wouldn't wish the experience on my worst enemy! I can't even IMAGINE what it would be like in full-tourist season in the summer. We went and were absolutely and utterly burnt out, overheated and exhausted in less than one hour and really hadn't seen much of anything. Our old knees, hips and ankles were aching and we were half deaf from the continuous roar of humanity in a stone building. Here's the beautiful glass pyramid entrance area...

And one of about a dozen buildings that make up the Louvre...

I was delighted by the many ceilings we saw and photographed several because... well... because pointing the camera straight up was about the ONLY direction you could point it without aiming at the back of 100 tourists...

Another ceiling...

And another...

And still another...

We walked for a solid 30 minutes up perhaps 600 stairs in shoulder to shoulder crowds to see the Mona Lisa. See that tiny speck on the far wall? That's the Mona Lisa and unless you had a LOT of patience, this is about as close as you're going to get to her. There had to be 500+ people crammed 40-50 deep around the painting- all trying to hold a camera above everyone else's head to take a photo.

We slipped down the edge of the room behind the crowd, thereby getting within about 50'-75' of the painting and holding the camera up arms-length over my head and fully zoomed I was able to take this photo to prove we were in the same room with the painting...

Another magnificent ceiling...

A few grab shots of famous paintings...

Some sculpture we passed by on our way to find the exit...

Once outside we walked the length of the Tuileries garden which was beautiful, though it too was PACKED with people...

LOTS of sculptures in the garden... well over 100 I'm sure...

Several large fountains are found in the Tuileries...

Emerging from the garden you can see the Eiffel tower a mile or so away...

We stopped for another crepe- this time citron sucra; a tablespoon of so of table sugar soaked with lemon juice. Very tasty!

Here's ONE travel option...

And here's another, built by Lamborghini. Lamborghinis are a common sight here. WOW!

So we made our way on to another museum: Musee del l'Orangerie which had a magnificent display of the impressionists, was air conditioned and had at most 400-500 people inside. Aaaahhh... MUCH BETTER!

We came home hot and exhausted after ONLY FOUR HOURS of fighting the crowds. Paris is a beautiful city- almost too beautiful for words. But the crowds of tourists make it almost unbearable to get around in. We've also noticed (as predicted) that while the English consistently went out of their way to be polite AND kind AND engaging, the French seem to all be 'polite' but aloof and certainly never what you would describe as kind!