THE LOUVRE LOVERS (July 5, 2010)

We woke the kids up at 7am much to their dismay. We were determined to get an early start so that we would beat the queue at the Louvre. This was a good plan as we basically walking right in just after they opened. We first visited the ancient Egyptian collection which was amazing in its large quantity of artifacts. There was everything from hieroglyphics to mummys to sphinxs to large pieces of stone from ancient buildings. Incredible!! I could have stayed in this area all day but the kids wanted to see the rest fo the museum so we moved on. Next, we toured the Greek pavilion and it was every bit as good as the Egypt collection. We went through the Italian exhibit and saw the famous “Mona Lisa”. It was an unbelievable crowd of people waiting a long time to see a very small painting. Then we moved on to the history of the French royalty from the 17th century. We did not realize that the museum is housed in the actual royal palace where all of the French royalty lived or spent time in from the 1600’s. Each room in the Louvre is actually a museum piece on its own from the bed chamber of the king’s mother to the hall where the sculptors and painters had their studios. We saw the dining halls and grand salons where many people gather and partied in their time.
We even saw Napoleon’s apartments with the actual furniture there as well.
Once we completed our tour of the Louvre we had lunch at the Hard Rock Café and then visited the Paris wax museum. This was very close to the restaurant and we were not expecting much but this museum turned out to be a lot of fun.
The remainder of our day was spent meandering through the streets of Paris window shopping.