Eric and I have had a great time in Paris. We visited the requsite number of musems (a lot) and found many interesting things. We also walked until I thought my legs would fall off. They were actually quite rubbery.
Our visit to the Louvre, which showcases art from the middle ages up through 1848, was interesting. We saw the requisite Mona Lisa and Venus di Milo, both of which were memorable for the hordes of toursits who pushed their way towards the masterpieces and then didn’t look at them for one minute, but instead whipped out their digital cameras and camera phones and began snapping pics. I found this enthralling.
Western culture seems to have shifted away from observing and appreciating art during viewing, and instead has placed more of an emphasis on recording the experience via digital means to show to our friends and relatives upon our return. Almost like a pictorial scavenger hunt, with waypoints clearly depicted by photographs of the objects of art. I found the Mona Lisa to be better than I’d expected, and while I would have liked to have gotten more than 15 feet away from it as to better inspect the brushwork and painting techniques, it was still interesting. I did see her about nine hundred times before we got to the hall where the painting was actually located. I believe the image of that painting is on more tourist junk than anyone else’s face ever.
After trailing around through the Louvre and seeing a few works that really caught my eye, and which I could identify as having influenced other more recent works, we wandered around through antiquity and saw loads of massive and tiny canvases which depicted more biblical, battle, and in between scenes than I knew possible.
While in Paris we also visited the Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin, the Pompidou Center, the Picasso Museum, Notre-Dame Cathedral, and the Catacombs. We walked through a number of neighborhoods, and saw a variety of places, which was fun.
Eric loved the Catacombs, which had been installed in the late 18th century, and were full of bones which had been removed from local cemeteries and placed in unused underground tunnels left from gypsum mines. Seeing all the skulls and bones so well organized was very strange, and noticing all of the cracks that were apparent in the skulls was something! Some skulls, probably 1 in 50 or so had what looked like bullet holes in them. It was a long walk underground, and I was glad when we finally surfaced, but did enjoy seeing all the decorations.