Vignette from Paris #2
One of the best things we did shortly after arriving in Paris was to buy a Paris Museum Pass. These cards are good for admission for about 60 venues in and around the city (including Versailles), and having one means that you don’t have to wait in the queue to buy tickets at most places. The only exceptions are the tower tour of Notre Dame and Saint-Chapelle. Skipping the line to buy tickets at the Louvre was worth the price alone, but we used it two or three times most days and it paid for itself quickly. Plus we went into museums we might not otherwise have visited–and really enjoyed them, including the architecture museum in Trocadero that had reproductions of ancient façades and city gates from all across the country.
On Wednesday we went to the Louvre for the first of two trips. We spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon in the Richelieu where the French paintings are kept. We then planned to go over to Sully to see the Mona Lisa. We went up the escalator to that wing but we were turned away and told to go up to Danon and across. The Louvre is a bit of a maze, but we eventually found the alternate route, but when we reached the final doorway, we were again turned away. Apparently there was some sort of security issue in that part of the museum. They cordoned it off and told us that they didn’t know when it would be open again. We waited around for a while, then decided to explore the Greek and Egyptian antiquities section, ending up in the basement where you can see the old foundation of the original castle that was located on the spot.
We never did find out what happened. I kept checking the news, but there were no reports of anything happening. Another of life’s little mysteries.
We went back again a few days later and made it straight in. You can no longer get very close to the painting and the crowd that gathers around it is apparently a favorite place for pickpockets to ply their trade. We paid our respects and moved on.
My wife was more interested in finding a painting she’d seen on her last trip to Paris many years ago, but she couldn’t remember the artist. She had the impression that it was French, possibly 18th century. It featured a woman, clutching a baby, being swept away by water, clutching a branch that seems about to break. I tried image searches but couldn’t turn anything up that seemed a likely candidate. Is this familiar to anyone?
