J'Adore Paris: Louvre

Ever since I was seven, I've had a passion for France and the French language. At the age of seven I decided it was time to learn French and my parents bought me a book and tape that teaches basic French to children. Thanks to "Teddy," a French bear, and his friends, I learned useful phrases such as "Je suis un ours." which means "I am a bear." By the time I got to middle school, I had a few phrases under my belt, and I continued to study French in school for five years.

Why is this relevant? Well I have ALWAYS wanted to go to France, and last week I was able to go for the first time!!! Here is where Paris, France is (I even made the map so you can see it in relation to Ireland):


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When I arrived in France, we had to take an hour bus ride to Paris. The bus ride itself was pretty boring, but I was thrilled to see all of the signs in French as I passed. I pronounced them all silently to myself, tried to translate, and (I know I'm a nerd) I had fake dialogues in my head in French to see what I remembered. To my surprise I remembered much more than I thought I would.

It was obvious when we arrived into the city; well first we had to drive through the not-so-nice areas, but I mean the heart of the city! I was completely enamored with the beautiful, intricate architecture of every building in sight.


It is difficult to tell with this picture, but each building had beautiful metalwork done on all of the rails of the balconies that were simply stunning.


We stayed in Monmartre which is where the famous Moulin Rouge and Basilique du Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart Cathedral) are located. We stayed there because it was the most budget-friendly section of Paris (which is important for students like us!). After we settled into the hotel for a bit, we went on our first Parisian adventure, to the Louvre! Driving through Paris to the Louvre, we saw some beautiful buildings. This is just across the street from the Louvre. The opera house is just across the way, to the right of the fountain:


And then there it was, La Musee du Louvre (the Louvre Museum).


The outside of the Louvre was like a museum in itself. There were so many tiny, intricate details on every inch of the building. It certainly was a sight to behold.


The Louvre is an enormous building; it is in a rectangular shape with one side cut off. Here is an aerial view of the Louvre:


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Our tour guide told us that if you took the Louvre, separated the floors and stretched out the entire thing, it would stretch close to 11 km! Additionally, if you were to spend just one minute looking at each of the 35,000 exhibits, it would take you approximately 14 years straight (without sleep) to view all of them. This is just to give you an idea of the enormity of this building!

As I walked through the archway to the middle of the rectangle, I caught my first glimpse of the illustrious pyramids. Here you can see the largest pyramid in back of the little one.


Many of us commented on how amazing it was that the architects were able to fit such modern structures (the pyramids) in with the old style of the main building. Somehow the two contrasted in a harmonious way.


At the very end of the rectangle (on the open side) was this arch. Some people thought it was the Arc de Triomphe, but it is much much smaller than the Arc, and it looks pretty different (you'll see that later!).


When it was time to go inside the museum, I was surprised. I had no idea that the main entrance to the Louvre was through the pyramid! Here's a view from inside (so cool!).


Now I walked past hundreds of exhibits when I was inside the Louvre, but the pictures I took were carefully selected. Although I was glad that my first trip through the Louvre was with a tour guide (because I did learn some interesting facts), it was difficult to get a real look at the museum's exhibits because he has a strict itinerary. The pictures that I took fell into a few categories: 1.) very famous exhibits 2.) artwork that I was personally attracted to 3.) exhibits that we stopped at and the tour guide explained to us and 4.) paintings that I studied in art classes. Some of them fit into multiple categories. I will definitely not bore you with every exhibit that I took a picture of.

The first thing we saw had to do with the history of the museum which is perfect since I like to share history with you so much! This is a picture of the original Louvre. Beginning in the 12th century, it was a fortress for the king, but was extended to become the Palais du Louvre. This is the original Palais du Louvre (it is the square part that you can see in the aerial view).


In 1682, King Louis XIV decided he wanted to reside in Versailles instead of the Palais du Louvre; in 1793, the Louvre became a museum. Since then, it has been added on to several times (the wings are the newer parts). The Pyramids were started in 1983, and by 1993 all of the pyramids were completed, resulting on what you see today.

This first sculpture is one that's familiar to most people, even those who don't know a whole lot of art. She is the Venus de Milo (in Greek mythology she is Aphrodite); Venus is the goddess of love and beauty. She was sculpted in Greece around 100 B.C. and is 6' 8" tall. The position that she is standing in is called controposto which describes the way that her shoulders and hips are going in opposite directions. This is an impossible position if a person is standing still; the position suggests that she is moving or dancing. Controposto is a common technique used by Greek sculptors in ancient times.


Here is the ceiling above the Venus de Milo. Most of the ceiling in the Louvre is highly decorated like this.


This painting is by Jacques-Louis David and is called "Napoleon's Coronation." The title is ironic since it actually depicts Napoleon crowning his wife, Josephine. In real life Napoleon crowned himself, which was not customary at all. The main reason I am showing this painting is because of its size. When we view slides or prints of paintings, we do not realize that some of them are huge! I was in awe at the size of some of the paintings in the Louvre. I purposely caught the people passing so that you could use them to gauge the size of this piece of art.


And here is the famous Mona Lisa. Honestly, she's a bit disappointing. I don't want to sound like I don't appreciate art, because I do, but she was one of the less spectacular displays of the museum. Not surprisingly, however, she was surrounded by mobs of people. I quickly joined the masses because I felt obligated to take a photo of one of the most famous paintings in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci knew the male anatomy very well and had a difficult time painting females. In fact, Mona Lisa was painted using a male model (who was likely da Vinci's lover). In 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. This theft (and eventual recovery) was what ultimately made the Mona Lisa so famous.


This is a painting by Paolo Veronese called "The Wedding at Cana." It depicts the scene where Jesus turns water into wine. This painting was so enormous that I couldn't get the entire thing in the frame. It literally took up an entire wall of the Louvre (granted it was a somewhat small wall for the Louvre). It turns out that most of this painting was not painted by Veronese, but by his apprentices.


Next I have some more pictures of the ceiling decorations. They were stunning.


I like how this one has more modern art mixed in with the traditional moulding.


This is the King's Room. There is a portrait of every king of France on the walls as well as many other intricate details. (Sorry for the bad quality of the pic. No flash allowed. It was a beautiful room though.)


Here is a room full of sculptures underneath the inverted pyramid.


And finally, as I said before, Paris is even more beautiful at night. I will leave you with pictures of the Louvre as I left that night.

Killarney Day 3

Well this last week has been awfully hectic and a whole lot of fun! It was RAG Week for NUI Galway which is basically a week full of events on campus in order to raise money for charities. This year over 20,000 euro was raised for various charities. RAG Week is also a week that the college students use as an excuse to go crazy so it was definitely a high-energy, fun-filled week for me.

I never finished blogging about my trip to Killarney (although I did hit most of the important points), so I am going to finish it up before I move on to Paris (which was an amazing trip!).

The day after our trip around Kerry, we had a few hours before we needed to leave for Galway. We decided that it would be fun to rent bikes for the day to see some more of Killarney National Park. Either European bikes are different, or I have become very rusty at bike riding because boy was it a struggle to ride those bikes at first. We were all laughing hysterically because it was so hard to get on the bikes, and then difficult to ride without looking all wobbly. You know how everyone says the phrase "it's like riding a bike" referring to how you don't forget certain things? Well that figure of speech no longer makes sense to me.

After five minutes or so, we got the hang of riding bikes again and made our way over to Killarney National Park. Our goals for the day were to see Muckross House, Muckross Abbey, and a waterfall that some people recommended seeing.

Now, not only is the skill of bike riding something that can, in fact, be forgotten, but it is also something that takes some leg muscle. When you are a kid and used to bike riding, you do not realize this. When you are 20 and have not ridden a bike in close to three years, especially uphill, you DEFINITELY realize this (but it's already too late).

We passed Muckross Abbey without stopping (because it looked like every other monastery we have seen in Ireland already), and finally made it to Muckross House. The Muckross House was built from 1839 until 1843 for the Herbert family. At the time it was one of the most modern houses in Ireland and almost completely fireproof. I also recall the tour guide from the bus tour saying that it had running water even though no one else did at the time (but I'm not entirely certain about that). It is a beautiful house, which you can see from both the outside, and tours of the interior. Unfortunately it was closed for the off-season so we were only able to see the outside.




The Muckross House was beautiful; it reminded me of the old mansions in Newport, RI. It even had a very large garden in the back of it (which I could tell will be beautiful in the spring and summer).



In the 1850s, the Herberts prepared the house for a visit from Queen Victoria. Though the Queen did end up staying at their house (remember Lady's View?), they spent so much money on the renovations for her that they went bankrupt and the estate was sold shortly afterward. The third owners of Muckross Estate were Americans and ended up donating it to the state of Ireland in 1932. Muckross Estate thus became Killarney National Park.

Next we biked to a waterfall that many people in Killarney said was worth seeing. Here are some sights along the way:





Although it was very pretty, it was not much of a waterfall. Actually, it was more like a downhill stream.

We were a bit disappointed with the waterfall, but I hear that in the spring it is a lot more impressive so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. It was definitely a peaceful place to be though. (How cool are the roots on this tree?)


There was still an entire day left of our rent and we wanted to get our 12 euro worth of biking in so we explored a bit more of the park, biked into town, got some lunch, returned the bikes, and headed back to Galway. After sitting on a bike all afternoon, walking and even sitting on the bus was a tad bit painful, but it was definitely worth it! Bye Killarney!