The Adventures of Doug and Bec: Paris

Saturday 26th - Sick

Sunday 27th - Still Sick

Monday 28th - Still Sick... but manned up and went to the Louvre.....

We booked flights to head to Northern Island for the 29th May, so Monday was our last chance to see the Louvre, even if it meant going there when we were both still sick... I apologies to anyone else who was there on this day...

We caught the Metro to the Louvre and after a half hour of queues we got or tickets and got in. During the time that we were there, the Louvre was hosting a temporary exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci's work (which I frequently referred to as Leonardo de Caprio throughout the day), so we bought a joint ticket to see everything which was 14 euro per person.

For those who have't been to the Louvre before, its HUGE! there are several levels and wings and a whole underground area where they have part of a castle. rebuilt underground... So we spend perhaps 4 hours wandering the buildings and saw the following exhibits;

French sculptures... was interesting at first but got a bit repetitive. You can tell there was a definite theme when these where all done. Lots of sculpture of what appeared to be Neptune (the sea god, not the planet) and a lot of nude sculptures. We even found a sculpture of two deer having missionary sex... quite strange...

Ancient Egyptian - was looking forward to this and was not disappointing. Lots of carvings, hieroglyphs and sarcophagus'. Was interesting to see the sculptures of all the Egyptian gods and the heap of jewlery featuring the 'Eye of Ra'

Greek and Roman - Was probably the most interesting to see the similarities with their sculptures and gods... ie; Poseidon and Neptune, Aphrodite and Venus. I found that i could identify most of them as soon as i saw them thanks to being taught by Mr Whale in year 7 of school! The Venus de Milo was worth seeing!

French Paintings - Definitely the larges and busiest area of the Louvre. We made our way to the area that held the Mona Lisa and were greeted by a crowd. We slowly made our way to the front to get a photo and it was like being in a mosh pit at a concert...

Overall a must see. We saw perhaps half of the Louvre but hit all the highlights and managed to not get lost once thanks to the courtesy maps provided.

The next day we headed back to the airport for our 2 hour plane trip to Belfast to meet up with Simon's parents for a visit.