The plan today was to go spend a few hours at the Louvre/Loo-vre museum in between the food places we came across as we wandered the streets. The Airbnb I booked is in the 7th arrondissement of Paris which was recommended by my friend Sumana as it’s only a 15 minute walking distance to the museum.
When I was putting this trip together a few months ago, my sister Kimberly told me about a free membership that Capital One card holders have to the The Cultivist which is a website where you can get free museum tickets if you order them in advance and are flexible with when you want to go. I submitted a request for this week and they got back to me a few days later with 2 tickets to the museum valued at $18 each for 10am Saturday morning.
We casually walked over to the Louvre and discovered a huge winding line around the main glass pyramid which I estimated to be at least an hour and a half wait to get in.
I had Joanna get us a place in line and I walked up to the main door asking if there was an another entrance since I had reserved tickets ahead of time. Much to my relief, the security guard pointed to a side entrance which only took us 10 minutes to get through and into the museum! So not only did we get free tickets but they fast tracked us out of the rain and closer to the art!
Neither of us have really been museum people. I think we planned to go to the Louvre because that’s the thing you do when you’re in Paris right? The only two things I had on my list to see were: how big the crowd was to see the Mona Lisa and find the Joseph Ducreux self portrait. If you don’t know who Joseph Ducreux is but you spend a lot of the time on the internet, you know who I’m talking about.
Holy crap this place was huge, I thought it was odd that a museum would take up this much room in a major city like Paris but it turns out that it used to be a castle built in 1190 then becoming a museum in 1793. There were tall and long hallways that stretched so far you could barely see the end of it. Many of which had incredibly detailed paintings and sculptures on the walls and ceilings.
If you were an art buff, it would be very easy to spend days admiring all of the different galleries and collections featured here. We however, are not, so we were bee lining to the things that were famous because reasons so we could take a selfie in front of them.
I will say that it was interesting learning that the room the Mona Lisa is housed in was redone in 2019 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Da-Vinci’s death in order to improve the flow of visitor traffic as the painting is the most famous painting in the world. In the previous 15 years leading to the renovation, it received over a hundred million visitors. I guess you could say it’s kind of a big deal.
Once we got out of there, we went in search for as specific painting that became a meme by adding rap lyrics over it in an old timey way.
Besides being a funny meme, the history behind this artist is actually pretty interesting. He lived in the 1700s and painted portraits of himself in strange poses which was against the norm of the art world at the time.
We got lost looking for where he was hiding but the search for the painting was fun and a good break from the crowds as this area of the museum was quiet and much cooler in temperature.
We found him!
Not too far away we found this other painting we deeply related to as it depicted how we felt on Sunday night, the eve before returning to work on Monday. We named the painting “Sunday Scaries”.
At this point in time we were in the museum for 2.5 hours and were starving. To avoid getting hangry at each other, we got this random ham and cheese sandwich out of the museum cafe. I thought it was just a normal ham and cheese sandwich but oh man…this humble sandwich will probably live in my memory for a very long time.
The baguette bread was crisp on the outside with a slight spongey and chewy texture. The cheese melted in your mouth and had a deep creamy flavor. The salty ham came through next and finally there was a thick layer of butter that brightened things up right at the end. To say it another way: DAAYUM!
We left the museum and wandered the streets for a few hours in search of more yummy morsels to feast on. Here’s a few things we found:
I got a little bored of taking selfies and pictures on my phone so pulled out my photography camera and told Joanna to “look natural” crossing the street.
As this was a one way street, I let all the cars pass first, walked into the middle and crouched down to get my shot. I hear “MonsieurMonsieurMonsieurMonsieur” from someone on the side walk, I turn around and the car that had just passed me was about to back up and run me over…I felt stupid and embarrassed. I did get a good reaction shot from Joanna the moment she realized what was happening.
