Au Revoir
“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.
Nothing is more fantastic.
Nothing is more tragic.
Nothing is more sublime.”
Musée du Louvre
We checked out of our hotel room, had them hold our two bags, and then took the Metro to the Louvre. You exit the train in an underground mall that leads directly to the entrance for pre-purchased ticket holders—pretty darn convenient.
Waiting for the museum to open, the glass pyramid motif repeated inside the mall.
The Louvre is the largest museum on Earth.
By reputation, it's also one of the best and holds works from antiquity up to the 19th century, including the world-famous Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa.
With nearly 239,501 square feet of exhibition space (that’s 5.5 acres), the museum is cavernous. Even with a map, room numbers, and signs, it’s a difficult space to navigate. But that didn’t stop us from having a great time seeing some of the best known and most amazing art. Here are just a few of our favorites:
Hearing horror stories about how large the crowds can get in front of the Mona Lisa, we headed straight for the famous painting.
The painting was bigger than we had expected (everyone says how small it is) and the crowds were no where near as over-whelming as we had anticipated. We walked right up to the front—easy peezy lemon squeezy.
The Virgin of the Rocks, by Léonard de Vinci
The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of the Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on 2 December 1804, by Jacques Louis David
It’s a monstrous painting!
The Soul Breaking the Ties that Bind her to Earth, by Pierre Paul Prud'hon
This painting is one of Prud'hon's final works. The artist, who lived his last years in misery, presents death as the victory of the soul; battered by tempestuous waters and tormented by the snake of Envy, the Soul frees herself from her earthly binds and rises into the light of immortality.
Liberty Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix
Both elated and frightened by the three-day revolution that overthrew King Charles X, Delacroix depicted the event in all its ambiguity. The horror of the corpses and filth of the rebels are transcended by the passion of the crowd that gathers around the sensual, superhuman allegory of Liberty.
The Winged Victory of Samothrace dates from the Hellenistic period (3rd-1st century BC). Greek sculptors at the time began to diverge from classical tradition and adapt their approach to create statues made for the three-dimensional settings in which they were to be placed.
The Winged Victory, for example, was not intended to be looked at front-on but rather from a three-quarter left angle. It is from this perspective that the monument—of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory) landing on this huge ship's prow base—can be fully appreciated.
The statue's powerful forward-moving stride, swept-back wings, and sophisticated drapery were designed with the aforementioned viewpoint in mind.
Crown of Louis XV, king of France from 1715 to 1774
The Venus de Milo
The Venus de Milo statue is believed to depict Aphrodite, goddess of Love, known to the Romans as Venus. This masterpiece of Greek marble sculpture, whose sculptor is unknown, is dated from about 120 BC.
The Great Sphinx of Tanis is a granite sculpture of a sphinx, whose date may be as early as the 26th century BC. It was discovered in the ruins of the Temple of Amun-Ra in Tanis, Egypt's capital during the 21st Dynasty and the 23rd Dynasty.
The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed during 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organized, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East.
The text is inscribed on a basalt stele that is just over 7 feet tall. This stele is the primary copy of the Code and was rediscovered in 1901 at the site of Susa in present-day Iran, where it had been taken as plunder six hundred years after its creation.
The top of the stele features an image in relief of Hammurabi with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice.
Below the relief are about 4,130 lines of cuneiform text: one fifth contains a prologue and epilogue in poetic style, while the remaining four fifths contain what are generally called the laws. The text is read right to left.
It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon.
Sleeping Hermaphrodite—Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite (goddess of sexual love and beauty, aka Venus), rejected the advances of the nymph Salmacis.
Zeus agrees to her wish to merge their two bodies into a single being with both genders. The original Greek work, now lost, is attributed to Polycles (about 150 BC). In 1619, Bernini sculpted the mattress beneath the ancient marble statue. We’ll just leave you with the back view.
Cupid and Psyche, by François Édouard Picot
We moved this painting here because it goes with the statue below.
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, by Antonio Canova
This was one of our favorite pieces in the Louvre. 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 a charming arrow and reviving her with a kiss.
Having been recently awakened, Psyche reaches up towards her lover, Cupid, as he gently holds her by supporting her head and breast. It shows the mythological lovers at a moment of great emotion.
The complex composition and subtle carving of the marble are a testament of Canova's skill: the figures' skin seems almost real to touch.
Fine curls and lines make up the hair and light feathery details create realistic wings upon the landing Cupid—his wings appearing almost translucent.
In Apuleius, Psyche had been warned by Venus against opening the jar she was given to collect a scrap of beauty from Proserpina for Venus, "But I give you one especially strong warning. Do not open or peep into the [jar] you carry, and repress all curiosity as to the Imprisoned Treasure of Divine Beauty.”
But Psyche gave way to curiosity just as she had returned from her voyage into the Underworld, peering into the jar to take some of the Divine Beauty for herself. However, Proserpina had not filled it with the Beauty, but rather with the "Sleep of the Innermost Darkness, the night of Styx, which freed from its cell rushed upon her and penetrated her whole body with a heavy cloud of unconsciousness and unfolded her where she lay."
It is the moment in which Psyche is "a corpse asleep" revived by Cupid that Canova chose to depict.
This sculpture represents the myth where Apollo kills the Python snake (actually he used to hold a sword). It is now popularly called the “selfie statue.”
I was surprised to learn the Louvre Pyramid was designed by Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei.
We’re standing in the lobby under the large glass-and-metal structure.
The Louvre Pyramid from above, in the main courtyard. This is where you queue and enter if you haven't pre-purchased tickets.
After spending all morning and part of the afternoon at the Louvre, we walked to nearby Wild & The Moon café in the 1st Arrondissement for some caffeine and goodies.
We then took the Metro to a station near the Latin Quarter so we could walk around to see some specific sites.
The Panthéon
The Panthéon is a monument in the 5th arrondissement. It stands in the Latin Quarter, atop the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève.
Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Louse Braille, Jean Jaurès, and Marie Curie.
Emily in Paris
“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.”
The lovely Place de l'Estrapade in the 5th arrondissement.
The rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques, running on either side of the building, is where you'll find all Emily's home bases, including the apartment where she lives with Gabriel as her downstairs neighbor.
The square comes complete with a fountain at the center (though the history is less sweet since it earned its name by being the site of public floggings).
For Gabriel's restaurant, originally Les Deux Compères and renamed Chez Lavaux in S2, the production use Terra Nera, an Italian family bistro at No 18.
This is the small plaza directly in front of the apartment complex where Emily and Gabriel live, and where they set up Emily’s outdoor birthday party. It is here that Camille gets up to make a toast and reveals Emily’s deception. High drama!
Le Musée Curie
As we were walking, we just happened across the Cure Museum.
Inside the building behind us is Marie Curie's old office, as well as her chemistry laboratory—which you’ll be happy to learn, was decontaminated in 1981.
A nearby street mural in honor of the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize and launching the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.
Catacombes de Paris
The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries, which hold the remains of more than six million people.
Large swaths of the Left Bank rest upon rich limestone deposits. This stone was used to built much of the city, but it was extracted haphazardly resulting in a series of mine cave-ins beginning in 1774.
The need to eliminate skeletal remains gained urgency in 1780 when a basement wall in a property adjoining a cemetery collapsed under the weight of the mass grave behind it.
All burials within the city were forbidden after 1780, but the problem of what to do with the remains crowding the cemeteries was still unresolved.
Both the mine renovation and cemetery closures were issues within the jurisdiction of the police.
After the creation of a mine inspection service, the police endorsed the idea of moving Parisian dead to the renovated sections of the subterranean passageways.
A well within a walled property above one of the principal subterranean passageways was dug to receive the unearthed remains.
Certain portions of the massive underground labyrinth were thus transformed into a sort of museum for the unearthed remains, headstones, sculptures, and other artifacts recovered from the former cemeteries.
The idea became law in late 1785 and, beginning in 1786, a nightly procession of black cloth-covered wagons carrying the millions of Parisian dead moved from the cemeteries to the well. It would take two years to empty the majority of Paris's cemeteries.
The black line on the ceiling guided workers through the labyrinth of old quarry tunnels to the ossuary rooms.
The catacombs in their first years were a disorganized bone repository, but Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury, director of the Paris Mine Inspection Service, had renovations done that would transform the caverns into a visitable mausoleum.
In addition to directing the stacking of skulls and femurs into the patterns seen in the catacombs today he used the cemetery decorations he could find to complement the walls of bones.
Skulls and tibias were arranged into façades of decorative designs following the medieval ossuary tradition.
These walls became known as “hagues.” The result is this captivating spectacle—intended to honor, rather than exploit, the dead.
Héricart de Thury also added monumental tablets and archways bearing ominous warning inscriptions, and also added stone tablets bearing descriptions or other comments about the nature of the ossuary, and to ensure the safety of eventual visitors.
The ossuary remained largely forgotten until it became a novelty-place for illicit concerts and other private events in the early 19th century.
The ossuary was walled off from the rest of the Left Bank’s extensive tunnel network.
After the construction of an access point, the ossuary was opened to public visitation in 1874.
The original well used when the quarry was active.
An homage to the less respectable and haphazard manner in which the remains were initially disposed.
Tombstone of Françoise Gellain
We’re missing a lot of skulls here! Someone is slacking off and heads are going to roll!
Watch your head! ☠️
In an area of the Catacombs called the Crypt of the Passion, is this barrel-shaped structure made largely of femurs and skulls. It was meant to be shaped like Obelix from the cartoon Asterix and Obelisk and is the top thing to see in the Paris Catacombs.
This eerie yet impressive display was made famous in 1897 when an illegal concert was held in the crypt. The concert held in the middle of the night included 45 musicians and over 100 guests, and featured Chopin’s “Funeral March” and the “Danse Macabre” by Camille Saint-Saens.
Such precision in their placement.
Such an amazing place to visit!
Arc de Triomphe
We really wanted to see the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile (Triumphal Arch of the Star) before we left, so we hopped on the neared Metro line and made our way to the monument dedicated to the honor of those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.
On the Metro crossing the Seine.
The roundabout with the Arc de Triomphe as its center could easily be a clock, given it has an amazing 12 roads that spoke off from its center. This is one roundabout I certainly never want to try and navigate.
I Was On A Paris Train
We had another visit to our favorite Rue Montorgueil for an early dinner at POKAWA Poké Bowl (the food is no good at the Eurostar terminal).
We then went to the hotel to retrieve our bags, and took the RER-C back to the Eurostar terminal at Gare de Nor.
Having cleared French and then British border controls, here we are on the walkway to board our 8:10 pm Eurostar train back to London.
A quick peak at my Fitness app for the three days in France shows we walked 27.6 miles (averaging 9.2 miles/day) and took 61,558 steps (averaging 20,519 steps/day). No wonder we feel so tired! 🥱
From our train window, a glorious sunset over the French countryside.
Au revoir France! You were a truly magical and romantic way to end our European tour de force.
We arrived back in London at 9:30 pm (having lost an hour due to the one hour time difference).
And just like that…our trip was over!
9 3/4 Months
Yes, we love Happy Potter. ⚡️
No, we did not plan for our journey to last exactly 9 3/4 months.
But like so many wonderful things that happened over the course of our travels, this was one final bit of striking serendipity: November 13, 2022, to September 3, 2023, turns out to be 9 3/4 months! ⚡️
We checked out of our London hotel and schlepped all our stuff onto the Piccadilly Line train—next stop Heathrow Terminal 5.
Mixed emotions!
Sunday, September 3, 2023—Boarding our brand new Airbus A350, British Airways Flight 273, departing Heathrow at 1:50 pm and arriving in San Diego at 5:05 pm (so a short 3 hours and 15 minute flight—perfect! 😆).
About to take the runway.
🇬🇧 It’s Over. We’re going home! 🇺🇸
Coda
Still Sunday, September 3, 2023—Jason met us at the airport and what does Amanda find as we’re walking to his car?
Thanks for watching over us throughout our travels Keith; it was fun having you along and we’re so glad you could join us!
Tuesday, September 5, 2023—We left Paso Robles on November 11, 2022, and now here we are—297 days later—westbound on Highway 46 at the San Luis Obispo County Line.
As we drove into Paso Robles, we turned on Chris Daughtry:
I don't regret this life I chose for me
But these places and these faces are getting old
I said these places and these faces are getting old
So I'm going homeI'm going home
