May 19: The Louvre

The Louvre is always at the top of the must-see list for visitors to Paris and, since we loved art, we decided to make a visit.  In some ways, the Louvre is a victim of its own success.  A few hundred million other people wanted to be there that day, too. 

Exterior entrance at the famous I.M. Pei pyramid.

Considering its popularity, the lines to get in weren't too bad.  Once we got in, though, we found the Louvre bewildering to navigate, with too few posted maps, and the AudioGuides (set up on small tablet computers) hard to read.  They showed icons of art works, but they were so small you couldn't see what you were looking at.  A couple of friendly American tourists showed us how to get to the screen where you just punch in the number by the artwork to get the description, which helped. 

We did have a nice lunch in the restaurant, although it was the most expensive meal on our trip.  Here's Ron, anticipating his meal of steak tartare, which the waiter thoughtfully reminded him was raw beef when he ordered it.  He said it was delicious.

Here's an example of the hordes- this, of course, is the famous Venus de Milo.  The crowd around the Mona Lisa was worse.

Finally, we decided to leave.  Except we couldn't find the way out.  The signs pointing to the Exit were all directing us to emergency exits- a valid purpose, but not if you want to leave without setting off all kinds of alarms.  When we did get to the Pyramid where we'd entered, the escalators up to the ground floor were blocked by silent guards.  There was a large spiral staircase up, but Ron found it a bit intimidating.  The only people allowed onto the elevator were displaying handicapped IDs, which Ron didn't have.  We were told that the closing of the escalators had something to do with the fact that it was raining.  Ummm,  OK.  Finally, after I got a bit dramatic and told a guard in French that we just wanted to escape, she showed us escalators behind us, which led out of the building. 

We've visited most of the major museums in Europe and we're pretty tolerant of crowds of tourists- heck, we're tourists, too- but we found the Louvre too chaotic to allow appreciation of their impressive collection.