Five Days in Paris: Day 4, Part 2

Walking back around the basilica, we tried to sit on the steps for a few minutes, but the crowds and pigeons drove us away pretty quickly, and we headed to our second stop of the day, the Louvre.

Louvre

We grabbed lunch from the Moroccan restaurant in the Louvre’s food court, deciding to skip out on the popular choices of Starbucks (there were 2) and McDonald’s. Who would have guessed that this pinnacle of French culture would play home to these American staples?

Then, it was time to start our intimidating self-tour of the Louvre. We’d picked up some maps the first day we were in town and had tried to narrow down the sites we wanted to see. We decided we needed to see the crowd surrounding the Mona Lisa,

Crowd Around Overrated Art

the large format paintings,

Wow. These are HUGE!

the Code of Hammurabi (Actually Mr. Traveler decided this. I didn’t even know what it was.),

Code of Hammurabi

and that we should see Napoleon’s apartments, since A had raved about them.

Napoleon III Apartments

Initially, we were kind of hesitant about visiting the apartments, because we had just been to Versailles and seen similar palace rooms the day before. However, we really liked this part, which displayed the excesses of Napoleon III. The chandelier in the above picture pretty much sums up these rooms.

Beyond those "must see" points, we decided we would walk by the paintings from the Netherlands; check out the sections on ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and pretty much see whatever else was along the way. Some of the things that I enjoyed the most were random things we didn’t even know existed.

For example, I really liked this creepy green lion:

It's kind of cute, isn't it?

And, I was thoroughly impressed by the works in the “Near-Eastern Antiquities” (Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Levant) section, which we had originally said we could skip. I loved the colors in the green and blue wall art and was amazed by the size of some of the carvings.

I love these colors!

Me with large carving

Most of all, though, I was impressed with the building, itself. From my experience, art museums, especially those with ancient art, tend to be dark and uninviting. In contrast, the Louvre was bright and friendly, somewhere I could imagine just sitting and writing or reading. The architecture was also interesting and frescoes on the ceiling reaffirmed the Louvre’s place as not only a place for art, but a work of art in its own right.

A Ceiling in the Louvre

 Even with as much as I loved wandering through the Louvre (more than I ever thought I would), after seeing at least a taste of almost every section, I was definitely ready to sit down and rest my feet. After leaving the exhibits, we grabbed some coffee and a macaroon at Paul’s, located right in the center of the three wings. I’d been eyeing these macaroon’s since we first arrived in Paris, and finally I got to try one. It was even more amazing than I thought it would be and we ended up having another one at a McCafé the next day.

Yum!

Leaving the Louvre, we decided to try and find the French restaurant that A had recommended. We knew the Metro stop and the address, but without the phone (the street didn’t show up on our map), I figured it was a long shot that we would actually end up at the restaurant. Still, with a couple hours before dinner time and no other plan, we figured we’d look for it and if we didn’t find it by the time we started getting hungry, we’d just stop in at a different restaurant.

We got off at the Opera stop and were immediately impressed by the large Opera House. We actually briefly considered trying to see a show before realizing that we probably weren’t dressed appropriately. Tours had stopped for the day, but we walked around the building before the great restaurant search.

Opera House

Eventually, we did locate Chartier.

Chartier

The experience was definitely worth the bit of walking it took to find our destination. The servers were not just polite, but friendly, chatting about their own travels and food experiences. We ordered a recommended red wine and both got the Endive and Roquefort salad as an appetizer. The endive came out piled high with cheese and a creamy dressing. I opted for the steak (and after a bad experience with a rubber-tire-textured and burnt steak during our honeymoon in France, ordered it rare) and Mr. Traveler went with the beef tartare. Finally, we finished with dessert. I had the Baba au Rhum Chantilly (which came highly recommended) and Mr. Traveler had the Coupe Mont-Blanc (a chestnut mousse/pudding like dessert, which the waiter insisted was too sweet, but was also very good). 

After dinner, we were stuffed, and ready to head back for the night. We made it back to the RER train station near Cousin C and A’s place and took the bus from there (since we couldn’t call for them to pick us up).

Cousin C and A had to leave early the next morning for London, so they left us a key, which we slid under their door before we left for our final day of sightseeing. Stay tuned for the last installment of “Five Days in Paris”.