We woke up early in the morning and and prepared to spend our whole day in The Louvre. From the hotel, we took a 15 mins walk to The Louvre just to enjoy the nice morning weather. It was about 930am in the morning and nothing was open, not even any cafes of restaurants that we could grab a bite. Just when we were about to give up and thought we have to wait for lunch and eat inside The Louvre, we found one! Happily we went in and ordered American breakfast! It wasnt cheap though, total bill came up to about 50 USD but it was a lovely breakfast with eggs, ham, croissant, fruits, yogurt, salad, orange juice and tea or coffee. We then asked the waiter on the direction to walk to The Louvre. Since we did not pronounce it properly, we ended saying "The Love" instead and the waiter laughed so loud! He even taught us to pronounced it properly. So embarrassing!
5 more minutes walk from the restaurant and we were at the front of the Louvre! It was a palace turned museum hence it was really big! We were so excited and we could not wait to get into the museum. Of course we did what other tourists did by snapping pictures of ourself before we enter the museum. Must get some pictures of the ever so famous glass pyramid right?
The Louvre, not the love! hahaha
The entrance. Packed!
It is only once you get into the Louvre that you need to buy the tickets. If we were to follow a 2 hours guided trip, it would have cost us about USD 200 together. But now that we have chosen to walk on ourselves, together with the tickets and the audio guided aid, the total was only USD 60 for both and we could just take as long as we want! So we started off our first guided tour by choosing the "Master Piece" that has made The Louvre so famous! The good thing about the audio guided aid is that we could stop anytime we want, repeat anytime and as many times, we could even change the tours anytime we want. The best part is there is these 4 digit numbers on some really important pieces throughout the museum and if we are interested, we could just key in the numbers and then we could listen to the history of the piece, how it was found, what were the style or technique used and etc... Ok back to the "Master Piece" tour. We were guided to walk around starting from the Sillus Wing and the tour ended with Mona Lisa. Here are some photos of it. Apparently Mona Lisa was bought by Louise V from Da Vincci when he asked Da Vincci to come over to France to help do some portrait. It was not that well known initially but when it was stolen from the museum sometime ago, it was widely published and hence created the hype and the popularity of the painting. Well it is still very popular because the people who queued up just to see the painting was long and there were 2 guards there just to protect the painting. Another major attraction was the painting on the last wedding dinner for Jesus. It was huge! And accordingly the painting was to show the ancient strata hierarchy where the royalties were sitting on the right of Jesus and on the left were the commoners. Jesus attended this last wedding dinner together with Virgin Mary before he was crucified. How sad.
Mona Lisa. Her eyes follows you everywhere you go!
The Wedding Feast At Cana.
The Winged Victory of Samothrace
The Venus of Milo
After the 45 minutes Master Piece tour, we then took on the Ancient Ruins Tour where we were introduced histories on the Mesopotamia, The Myan, Ancient Greek, Rome and others. We were rather excited initially but then about 1/3 down the tour we were overwhelmed with information and our legs were aching again! So at the end we ended sitting on benches available in between rooms and listened to the audio and just watched the piece from far away. By the time we finished this tour, it was already 4pm. We have spent altogether 6 hours in the museum yet we have only managed to cover only 1/4 of everything. We ended our trip by entering into Napoleon's Chamber and went for some shopping spree at the souvenir shop. The best souvenir i bought was a box of dvds on The Louvre with 3D animated tours. So i got to continue my visit even in Oran. But the truth is if I have the chance to go back to Paris again, I will definitely spend at least 3 days just on The Louvre alone because there were so much to see.
All these once belonged to the famous Napoleon III. All the majestic decorations were intended to amazed the visitors!
The Louvre closed at 5pm and we left and went back to the hotel. We have another night trip around Paris by 9pm and then will end our tour by watching the ever famous show from Moulin Rouge. So we got prepared and went to the gathering point again but this time around we were not the last anymore. And we got some really good pics as well. Yeppy! Then we were ferried to the Moulin Rouge where we had to queue and waited for 30 minutes before we were allowed to get into the theatre. We were not allowed to snap pictures too and our cameras were safe kept the moment we enter the entrance. Basically the theatre is a not that big but with lots of tables that could accommodate 1000 people. Each table will be shared by either 4 or 6 people with a bottle of champagne. The performance of Mouline Rouge was interesting. We have very fit and sexy gals dancing naked (upper part) most of the time, we have a very funny puppet show, magic, ponies, Cancan dances and others. The whole show lasted 2 hours but there was never a moment of boredom. By the time we finished, it was already 2am and the coach ferried us back to our hotel.
Candles are constantly burning at the bottom of the Arch to remember the victims of war.
Eiffel Tower with its normal lights.
Eiffel Tower with its light show. Too bad I cant capture the glittering.
The next day, we checked out by 10am to catch the shuttle bus. And from then on for the next 8 hours, we were checking in and out from Paris CDG airport to Lyon airport to Algeria airport. By the time we reached Oran it was already 7pm and it was raining! Arggh!!! But then because of the rain, i saw the brightest and biggest 2 rainbows ever! Starting from the Mediterranean Sea. What a great way to end our trip!
These are really nice. Very famous dessert in France. Cost about USD 2 per piece! Yum yum! Crunchy when bit but melts in your mouth.
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