(I am getting behind with my posts because we have now traveled on to Italy and will be spending the next day or two here in Sicily. i started the post below before we left France but never got a chance to finish it and get it posted... so forgive us if the pucs are posted without explanation or captions...)
One cannot see Paris in a month, never mind in five days, so visits to museums were brief and to the point...catch the major "must see's" and then move on to the next. Four or five hours was enough time for us at one stretch... espcially for Dick's recovering back. Seats in the museums are few and far between, and the sheer crowd numbers have bordered on being oppressive. It is, after all, May which is the start of Europe's busy tourist season. (Everyone, including us...wants to come before the heat of the summer! Lord knows Neither Dickle nor I are fans of heat!)
We have discovered on this trip that it takes us a good thirty minutes to get into the main reception area, find an English map; rent audio sets; orient ourselves and then swim like fish upstream through the seas of people! The first Sundays of the month are free admission for everyone at most Paris museums. That was yesterday. We thought that because this was a Monday that the crowds would less than what we found at the d'Orsay the day before. Silly us! The Louvre is the largest and most visited museum in the world! Like the Palace at Versailles, the crowds had to number in the tens of thousands, and lines in front of the most popular items like our girl Mona were long and deep!
Most of the museums had "No Pictures" signage that virtually everyone ignored. I would imagine that years ago cameras were easy things for guards to spot and to govern but in this day and age of iPads and cell phones, all of which have cameras, it is almost impossible to prevent snapping a picture. Most of us rule-breakers nixed the use of flashes which puts one tiny step above those that did. The Louvre surprisingly allowed non-flash pictures but it meant that lots of visitors assuming their typical hand-on-their-hip FB stance being photographed next to a Greek or Roman statue! Whatever! Just get outta my way so I can snap my picture of the painting!
 |
| No clue who she is! |
 |
| Not your typical air mattress! |
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment