The Juliens: Paris: Friday

Friday morning, we started at the Louvre. Tim had done his research, so we took the métro past the Louvre and entered through the security line set up in the Carrousel mall. This was a good idea on two fronts: the line was shorter and it was indoors (it was raining). We waited maybe 20 minutes to get through the security check (these were everywhere in Paris) and then there was no line for tickets. Then we used the combination of Maya's scavenger hunt and a list Tim had made in advance to guide us through the Louvre. We probably entered somewhere between a half and two-thirds of the rooms in the Louvre.

First, the inverted pyramid at the Carrousel entrance.

Cora had two favorite statues. One was this lion. She is still talking about it.

Cora's other favorite thing was this statue of a hunter killing a deer. Grandpa Tim should be proud.

Maya has been learning about the Sumerians and the Egyptians in history class at school. The Louvre did not at all disappoint in supplementing these lessons. And Maya was eager to see many of the things that she'd learned about (wanting to take pictures to bring back to show her classmates).

There were these Mesopotamian statues of winged bulls (Lamassus, from 713 BC). How many legs do they have?

This was one of the photos Maya wanted for her class... a cuneiform tablet.

Cora was quite taken with this fertility statue. She demanded this photo.

I was very taken with this style of art. They are made of bricks that appeared to be sculpted, painted, then fired. They were beautiful. They were also from Mesopotamia.

Here's a close up slightly from the side.

This was labeled, literally, "colossal vase". It's Phoenician.

Then we entered the Egyptian section. This particular artifact is a sarcophagus box of Ramesses III. It dates from around 1500-1000 BC.

This is a series of statues of the goddess Sekhmet, again from Egypt, around 1300 BC.

We saw several variations on the sphinx. This was interesting for Maya because (a) she read a story about the sphinx for Italian lessons and (b) it was part of her scavenger hunt.

We then headed upstairs for more modern art. We saw "Venus de Milo". From a distance. It is beautiful.

And "Winged Victory". Also beautiful. Also we only looked from a distance.

This painting is called "Autumn". Maya has actually made her own version of this in art at school; it is currently hanging on the art wall in our apartment. The artist is a famous Italian painter named Giuseppe Arcimboldo; he's famous for, perhaps obviously, using food to construct his figures.

This painting (or pair of paintings, really), is fantastic because it sits in the middle of the gallery, with the two paintings placed back to back. The paintings are by Daniele Da Volterra, and depict the battle between David and Goliath. One side shows the battle from the "front" and the other shows the same seen from the "back". Cool, right?

Then there's the "Mona Lisa". Still unimpressive, in my opinion, though I admittedly didn't get particularly close this time.

Cora wanted to take her own photo of the "Mona Lisa". Here it is. She was very happy with this photo, but I guess it's a good reminder of a kid's perspective in an art museum.

This is "just" the ceiling of one of the galleries (specifically, the Salle Denon).

This is "The Deluge", by Ann-Louis Girodet.

This is the Gallery of Apollo. It's a beautiful room, whose artwork has been contributed to by many very famous painters and sculptors. It served as a model for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

My, that's a pretty ceiling.

A view down the hallways of the first floor of the Sully wing.

This is a bronze cat. From Egypt.

This is the "Seated Scribe". He's pretty famous. Again, a great connection to Maya's history lessons, where they learned what it meant to be a scribe and why scribes were such important members of society. This particular statue is from ancient Egypt, dating from around 2500 BC. He's made out of painted limestone. With rock crystal eyes. And wooden nipples. Obviously.

This was a case of Egyptian amulets. Maya saw them and gasped, saying "oh, these are on our Egypt poster!"

This is a statue of the god Bes. He's ugly, but he was a nice god. He kept the bad spirits away, especially for pregnant women. Again, from Egypt, but more recent, about 350 BC.

These are cat mummies. They took us a long time to find. We almost gave up. But then a guard (who we actually asked for directions to the exit) said, "did you see the cat mummies?" Then gave us directions to those instead of the exit.

These are Ushabti. They were funerary figurines that were meant to be the servants of the deceased in the afterlife.

Inside the main pyramid.

And that was our morning in the Louvre. Both girls will tell you that the Louvre was their favorite stop in Paris. I think it's genuine. They were both very engaged and interested, with no complaints.

But we were hungry. Time for lunch. We walked a ways away from the main tourist thoroughfares for this place: Chez Denise.

We ate lunch among a bunch of local Parisians. Tim had some fish. I had some stuffed cabbage. Maya had lamb chops. Cora just shared around.

After lunch, we headed to the Musée d'Orsay. It's located in an old train station that used to house the Paris-Orsay railway. The building itself is plain beautiful.

Our first order of business was to get Cora to go to sleep in the kid carrier (thanks, again, Amy!). After we accomplished this successfully, we got down to the business of seeing the art.

Before we got serious about the impressionist art upstairs, we took a look at the ground floor galleries.

This first painting is called "Summary Execution" by Henri Regnault. It was striking. If gory.

This is stained glass by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. It's called "At the New Circus, Papa Chrysanthemum."

Then there was this weird looking dude with a frog. It's "Frog-Man" by Jean Carriès.

There's a really cool model of Paris centered on the Opéra, and then a cut out model of the Opéra house itself. Maya was really taken with these. (So, in fact, was Cora, when she later woke up from her nap.)

This is "Ours Blanc" by François Pompon.

The next two paintings were particularly striking for their color and themes. The expressions and situations were vivid and super realistic. Tim says "halting." This one is called "Old man in front of some tombs of children" by Osman Hamdi Bey.

This one is "L'excommunication de Robert le Pieux" by Jean-Paul Laurens. Seriously, you feel like you're in the room with this poor couple whose flame has just gone out.

Maya's scavenger hunt required finding a clock with a city view. Check. (Maya is actually the shadow between the four and five.)

This is "Coquelicots" by Monet. Maya really likes it because she knows that it's one of her grandma's favorites.

Maya is now keeping track of how many of the 28 bronze casts of Degas's little dancer she's seen in person. So far it's three.

This is the best painting in the entire world. It's the "Floor Scrapers" by Gustave Caillebotte.

This is a closeup of "Peasant Girl Lighting a Fire" by Camille Pissarro.

This is the "Errant Knight" by Emmanuel Fremiet.

And finally, this is "Cain flying before Jehovah's Curse" by Fernand Cormon. Not my favorite. But Tim likes weird stuff.

And with that, we exited the Musée d'Orsay. From here we headed to grab an early dinner. On the walk we saw this... interesting... store window of a taxidermy shop.

We went to Cafe Briezh for dinner. It was on Tim's recommended list of restaurants. It was super fantastic. It turns out that we were lucky to have wandered in a bit before the true dinner hour. We didn't think to make reservations at a crêperie. We were shown our table but asked to make sure we left by 7:30. When we left around 7:15, the bar/waiting area was wall-to-wall packed with people.

Maya looks like she might enjoy that crêpe. Really galette... a buckwheat crêpe. But she just ate the egg and ham out of the middle. But she did devour her share of the chocolate and banana crêpe (not galette) that came later.

The adults... we very much enjoyed our galettes. And crêpes. And cider.

The kids (and I) had had a long day, so we walked back to our apartment. Tim took some nice dusk photos from the balcony. We had a great view over the rooftops of Le Marais.

And of the Centre Pompidou.

After we settled the kids into bed, Tim took the camera for a nighttime walk in the city. This first photo is the Saint-Jacques Tower. It is what remains of a church that was destroyed in the French Revolution.