Soaking up the Parisian Sun (Sunday, October 23, 2011)
Love this city. Natalie started our day by scrambling eggs for all of us. We didn’t rush it, knowing this was our last full day of sightseeing. Brian packed a lunch for us, and off we went. First we went to the Louvre, the enormous museum that we considered skipping altogether. But it’s not terribly expensive, and Rita suggested that we just pick a few things to see. That’s what we did. Of course we went to see the Mona Lisa. We had heard it was small and much more modest than its fame suggests, and that was true. However, many would-be pop stars dream of paparazzi like this. A huge crowd of people maneuvering to the front of the line to get a photo of a painting they don’t really seem to look at with their actual eyes. Her colors are rich and deep, and the painting is subtle, and it’s completely at odds with the mob scene played out before it! We examined the Wedding Feast at Cana , found the Venus de Milo, and then made our way to the Napoleon III apartments. The canopy bed is ve