Monday, November 15 – Louvre
Monday morning the boat had stopped at Le Peys, and in the morning had a tour of Napoleon and (mostly) Josephine’s château. We decided to skip it since we had seen plenty of places where the royalty spent lavishly, and we wanted to save our energy for the afternoon at the Louvre. After lunch, we went to a bus to drive into Paris and to the Louvre, while the boat continued on to the final docking place near the Eiffel Tower, where it had started. On the trip, I did finally get a picture of the statue of George Washington, which we had passed a few times before.
It is really a pleasure to see how fast pictures upload at home with Spectrum. Anyway, we proceeded along the Seine to the Louvre. We started with a short walk so that we could see the glass pyramid, which is the way that people who are not on tours enter the building. It was built in honor of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution (14 July 1989).
After that, we went through security, COVID passport check, and admission, and then entered the museum by going down several escalators. This led us the the lowest levels where you can see the original walls of the fortress. Louvre stated as a fortress at the edge of town around 1190. It was built up with walls and moat.
We walked through several centuries. After a few hundred years, the île de la Cité (where Notre Dame and Saint Capelle are) became too crowded so the Kings decided the Louvre should be converted to a Royal Castle.
The first item we came to was the Venus de Milo, which is a Greek statue from the first century BC, which has been in the Louvre since its discovery in the 1800’s. Our guide pointed out that it is not a statue of the Roman God Venus but probably the Greek God Aphrodite. It is quite amazing to see.
After that, we went further upstairs and came to Winged Victory of Samothrace, which is a slightly older Greek statue which was amazing in its detail. The “boat”, a block beneath it was part of the discovery.
We then went into a room full of portraits and crowns.
We now entered a room with many paintings up through 19th centuries. The Louvre goes only through that period. The Musée de Orsay, which we have saved for our next trip to Paris, has the impressionists. 
This picture by Antonello de Messine is from the 15th century and our guide pointed out the near photographic detail of the picture.
Next we came to Leonardo da Vinci. He is, of course, the reason people go to the Louvre, due to a certain paining. There are several of his paintings in the Louvre, and we started there.
This is “Virgin and Child with Saint Anne”. The older baby is John the Baptist and the smaller one on the right is Jesus. There is a later version of this paining in which Leonardo put a halo over Jesus to eliminate confusion.
This is John the Baptist.
This is “Virgin of the Rocks”.
We then went to the painting that everyone goes to see. “Mona Lisa” or “La Giocanda”. A very orderly line of people to go see it and no crowds like there were in the Hermitage when we visited.
After that, we continued our walk and started going back down stairs and came to this beautiful carved marble statue.
Using a new technology in IOS 15, I extracted the above information.
Antanio CANOVA
Possagno fregion de Venisel, 1757 – Vertise. Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, 1793
Marble
Psyche, poisoned by the fumes from a flask she was instructed
not to open, is on the brink of death. Cupid rushes to her rescue,
pricking her with an arrow and reviving her with a kiss (based on
The Golden Ass by the Roman author Apuleius, 2nd century ADI.
The complex composition and subtle carving of the marble are
a testament of Canova’s skill: the wings appear translucent and
the figures skin seems almost real to touch
After this, we went down a few more stairs and exited the museum through the shops. Since we are on the “shoulder” season, and and because of COVID, the tour guide was amazed at the ease with which we got through. It would take a number of weeks to see everything, but we did see the highlights.
After this we got in the bus and drove to the diamond district and walked to the same restaurant we had visited for lunch on the previous Wednesday. This was the only disappointing meal in the whole trip. In retrospect, we wish we had caught a taxi back to the ship to have a last dinner with the friends we met during the cruise. We did a little packing, and then went out to see if we could find anyone, we found one couple who was just leaving for the Paris by Night tour. We then went out on the sun deck to view the Eiffel Tower by night one last time and then went to bed for and early wake-up.
