Paris Day 4

We were exhausted after the D-Day Tour on Saturday so we slept in a little bit Sunday morning. By slept in, I mean we woke up at 7:30 or 8, lol. We wanted to get pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower in day light so we ran by there before going to The Louvre. It was kind of early but luckily there were a few other people to take our picture for us. I posted the photo on a previous post about Paris.

I really wanted to spend a lot of time at The Louvre because there are so many different galleries. We actually ended up walking through almost the whole museum, although there were a lot of areas we didn't spend a lot of time. There were several wings that were closed, including part of the Egyptian wing that I was really bummed about. We were still able to see a lot of neat and famous works of art. All the plaques describing the pieces were in French. Only the very famous works of art had English descriptions next to them. I guess this is the museum's way of getting you to buy an audio guide. They did have information tablets in most rooms in different languages but 90% of the time all the English ones were gone. That may have turned out to be a good thing because I tend to read everything :). While we were there Daniel and I got to talking about why particular paintings or sculptures become so famous and others don't. Why is anything or anyone famous? I guess anything that sparks enough interest in enough people can become famous! Here are the photos of the really famous paintings and sculptures along with some other not so famous items that are still pretty cool.

There is a nice outdoor area leading up to The Louvre. I'm sure it would be beautiful in the summer.

This is the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. It was built at the beginning of the 19th Century to commemorate Napoleon's military victories.

The Louvre Pyramid was completed in 1989. The museum needed a better way to get mass amounts of people into the museum. It was controversial because of how modern it was compared to the rest of the architecture but I think it looks cool together. There's a pretty night picture up on Wikipedia :)

This is part of a Medieval Moat from the Louvre Palace. It started out as a fortress in the 12th century under Philip II.

An Egyptian tomb covered in hieroglyphics and drawings. I can't imagine having to carve this whole thing.

A really old scroll covered with hieroglyphics.

Egyptians mummified everything. This is the skin of a crocodile that has been preserved. There were also a lot of mummified cats in this display case.

This stone was just amazing. Some of the depictions are raised, like what's shown here, but above this scene are hieroglyphics that are sunk in. I just can't imagine the amount of man hours that went into making this stone.

The architecture of the museum itself was really pretty. A lot of the galleries had really elaborate walls and ceilings.

This is The Winged Victory of Samothrace. Another one of the famous sculptures. We probably wouldn't have known if it didn't highlight it in the museum map, hehe.

This is in the Italian Paintings section of the museum. So many of the paintings were of Jesus or based on Bible stories. It was interesting to see so many different depictions of the same scenes.

The Wedding Feast at Cana. This is a scene from the story of Jesus turning water into wine. Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding and when the wine ran out, Jesus had water poured into jugs which he then turned into wine. You can barely see, but there is a golden halo around Jesus' head.

The Mona Lisa, nuff said. :)

The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I. I like this one. I can't remember if I posted a picture of the replica that hangs at Versailles but this is the original.

I had to do a little bit of research on this but it is a Human-Headed Winged Bull. There were 4 of them in this area. There's a label on the map called "Cour Khorsabad" which is all I had to go on. Khorsabad was a city in what is now northern Iraq.

This statue was in a really nice area that made it seem like you were outside. There were a lot of statues with lions; either being attacked, attacking, or their heads as trophies.

More pretty decorations. I thought this banister was really intricate and pretty.

Not sure what this was but we thought it was kind of weird. The lady in the middle is holding her own head.

There were several stone sculptures like this. The detailed carving is just ridiculous. You can mainly see it in the two arches on the left and right.

Diamonds! Are a girls best friend :) Down at the bottom are Bracelets of the Duchess Angouleme. I'm not sure what the others are because I couldn't find them on the Louvre website. I think they may have all belonged to her though.

A large dining room in the apartments of Napoleon III. This area was just amazing. I can't imagine living in such opulence. Sometimes it was almost a little too busy though. Everything is decorated with a really ornate pattern.

A chandelier and the highly decorated walls and ceiling in one of the sitting rooms in Napoleon III's apartments.

I thought this statue was cute. It's a little angel!

The Code of Hammurabi. After some research, I found out this is supposed to be in the shape of an index finger, with the scene at the top meant to represent the fingernail. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be something to do with "an eye for an eye" that was written into the code or not.

Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo. According to Wikipedia, pieces of the arms were found with the statue, even though they were already broken off. This statue was actually made in several pieces. The torso, the draped legs, and each arm were made out of separate pieces.

After we finished going through The Louvre, we decided to try to make it to the Catacombs. It was already a little past 3 and the last tickets sold would be at 4. We didn't make it until 3:45 and there was a pretty long line. There were employees telling people as they got in line that they most likely wouldn't get in, but we decided to go ahead and wait anyways. We didn't have anything else to do besides head to the airport for an 8:30 flight. They only allowed about 15 people to go through every 5 to 10 minutes, but luckily we got in.

The Catacombs are an underground burial ground for about 6 million people. It's in the remains of an old stone mine that used to be just outside city. With the rise of Christianity, faithful were buried under and around their churches. They eventually became very crowded and ran out of room to put their dead. Then they decided to go to mass graves for those not able to afford to be buried on church grounds, however, this caused a lot of nasty diseases to get into the water system. Finally someone came up with idea of moving the bodies into the underground tunnels left from abandoned stone quarries and the first transfer began in 1786. The area was consecrated to make it a proper burial site. Originally the bones were just placed in there haphazardly but in 1810, the overseer decided to rearrange the bones in a more visually pleasing manner. He used skulls and femurs and sometimes they're even placed in different designs, like hearts or crosses. You're not allowed to use flash so a lot of our pictures didn't come out that great but here they are.

You had to walk through a lot of tunnels like this before getting to the actual bones.

There was a well left over from when the quarry was in use.

A sign right before you enter the area with bones. It says "Stop, this is the Empire of Death."

A cluster of skulls right when you enter.

In most of the areas the skulls are lined up like this with the femurs in between the rows.

A design made of bones.

A cross made out of skulls. There was an employee walking through with a flashlight but I'm not sure if that helped or made the picture worse.

More rows of skulls and femurs.

If you were to walk through here without knowing anything about it, it would be kind of creepy. I actually think it was a really respectful way for them to solve the problem they had.

It's hard to see in this picture but there's at least 5 ft between the edge of the bones (the skulls) to the back of the cavern. It even goes farther back on the right side of this photo. We walked for what felt like forever with bones lining the tunnels on both sides. There were even more areas blocked off that were filled with bones. It's not hard to imagine that 6 million remains are down there.

I was so glad that we were able to squeeze in the Catacombs before we left. That was one of the most memorable things from my previous trips to France and I wanted to see it again when I would be able to appreciate it and remember it even better.

I'm so glad we were able to take two and half days to explore Paris (the third day was for the D-Day Tour). I wish we could have spent more time there because there is so much more to see. The only problem is that everything costs about 10 euros, so it's definitely not a cheap trip! We were really exhausted after the trip and ready to be "home" in Leeds.

As I finish up this post, we're getting ready to catch a train to Bath, England. I think this will be a little bit more of a relaxing trip. The main thing to see in Bath are the Roman Baths! I'm also really excited about going to Dublin next weekend! It's hard to believe we only have 2 weeks left in Leeds before we head to Germany!

I hope everyone has had a great week and is ready for the weekend!