Louvre Day. Deep Breath. Snacks packed. Good supply of coloured pencils, drawing paper, colouring in books, charged iPs (pods, pids, pads etc).
To preserve strength we took the metro to the Louvre station. This has been transformed since I was last there, which was almost 20 years ago. The station exit opens into an underground modern cave filled with the remains of ancient walls and filled with modern shops. Never miss a retail opportunity. We queued for our museum passes in a queue that must have been almost as long as the one we were trying to avoid by buying one. We then proceeded with the crowd through underground passages through more retail opportunities - tantalising Louvre related shops including an entire shop devoted to the most magnificent art books and toys for children - finally emerging into the Light under the pyramid which is central mission control for processing visitors and distributing them via ancient and modern means into the various wings of the building. All rather magnificent. The queues are reduced by having multiple opportunities for ticket purchasing and weren't too bad at all.
As advised, we focused on the highlights. The audio guide caters quite well to this with various choices of tour or the option of just picking out the (selected) pictures as you find them. Unfortunately information about pictures not included in the guide is all in French and brief at that. Eva switched off very quickly and descended into the drawing and cyberworld, raising her head for a brief nod at the Mona Lisa, with which she seemed distinctly unimpressed after all the hype. The rest of us still got quite a kick out of seeing it. I had forgotten that there are quite a few other Da Vincis. Wonderful to see. Also really enjoyed the big romantic French revolution paintings and our increasingly rushed foray through the Dutch masters. Unfortunately the audio guides ran out of batteries before we did. Irritating.
All utterly exhausting but hopefully something sunk in.
We escaped into the Jardin des Tuileries and collapsed into chairs by the lake with beautiful ice creams from Amarino which are delivered looking like beautiful flowers and taste superb. The gardens are looking more autumnal every day but the cottage garden flowers are still going strong. So pretty.
Somehow, I managed to convince our exhausted team to undertake an ultra quick tour of L'Orangerie before heading off. All were suitably awe inspired by the Monet waterlillies and Alex, Carolina and I wished we could have spent longer in the down stairs area. We rushed through at criminal speed as they were closing. Well worth it. If I'd had the time again, I would have avoided the Louvre altogether - or just headed to the Mona Lisa and spent more time in the smaller galleries.
I then had the crazy idea of visiting the yarn shop I had read about which was 'sort of' on the way home, near Les Halles. It was closing at 6.45 and it was close to 6. I couldn't see when I would get there otherwise. We found it easily and it was HEAVEN. See photos. Could have spent hours there. Absolutely beautiful yarns, ribbons, buttons, accessories and patterns all beautifully displayed. I chose a modest amount of yarn for two cardigans for Eva and went to pay. My wallet was missing. I thought I'd been so careful but we think it was pinched on the metro which was horribly crowded. Such a bugger. We tried not to let it get us down too much.
We headed home, after a rather indifferent but nonetheless welcome meal from the Brasserie around the corner and collapsed in a heap. This travel business is tiring.
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