Thought I would get an early start as I wanted to see the Louvre and then maybe the Champs Élysées . The Louvre opens at 9:00, so I thought if I got there at 8:30 AM I could be there right as it opened and have some time in a uncrowded museum to move quickly and catch a good chunk of it. That kind of thinking showed the limitations of my education, for had I sat and thought about it really hard, I would have reasoned that the Louvre is not just a Museum, but an institution that is centuries old and possesses art and antiquities from every corner of the world, and that the long, long, long line of Louvre administrators Did not simply sit back and politely wait for people to donate items to this institution, but rather they financed, raised and deployed international expeditions of daring men to go out into the world and get those treasures and bring them back to France. The Louvre was founded by Kings, and has been the cultural darling of more Kings, and emperors, princes and potentates since before the great-great-grandparents of everyone alive on this earth were even conceived. the Louvre and the priceless works it houses are on the bucket list of millions and millions of people who might spend their entire lives within sight of their birthplace and go out on a long journey only once in their lives, and that is to see the Louvre, and when that is seen they go home and die. So what all this means is that when I arrived at 8:30 AM to get an early start on the Louvre, the line was ginormous.

Within minutes of opening the place was zoo. Most impressive were the Chinese tourists who come in droves to see what the Louvre has to offer which is, well, everything. The Egyptian antiquities were better and more beautiful than any I had ever seen in any museum anywhere. There were little wooden figures with the paint still on them that was applied 5000 years ago. There were items there that were collected centuries ago. Blown away does not begin to describe my mental state as I wandered. Every art museum I’ve ever been to had just moved down a notch in my estimation.

I got an audio tour device, programmed into a Nintendo DS2 by the way, and wandered about a bit before opting for one of the standard tours programmed into the slim handheld. It was called “The Masterpiece Tour” and was designed to satisfy the need of a bucket lister who is short on time and patience with crowds. It promised to show you the highlights in just 50 mins. I hit Start on the touchscreen. A sultry female voice with a tone, timbre and sexual edge identical to the voice of the Air France flight, began to guide me to all the key works in the place. I saw the Venus de Milo, I mean THE Venus de Milo. seeing it brought back unexpected memories. My mother had put a small replica in the corner of our backyard. I think she bought it in
Tijuana. I was fascinated with the compact and beautiful shaped breasts on that replica, and no less so on the real thing. The tour took me through the basement of the Louvre, to see the foundations laid in the Middle Ages. Some more statuary was shown off especially a Greek statue commemorating some victory somewhere. But all of this was a prelude to the one piece that everyone was there to see.

As I stood before the Mona Lisa I was fascinated by the hundreds of electronic cording devices trained on her. The Kardashians, in all their lives together, will never have as many cameras pointed at them sucking up the light reflecting off them as La Gioconda will this week alone.

By 1:00 I had about finished the Masterpiece tour. I had barely scratched the surface of this amazing place and more people were streaming in every minute, school groups, tour groups, art societies, and pilgrims of every stripe were flooding in from all directions. I thought it time to be grateful for what I had see. Resolve to return, and get back out o to the streets. I a strolled through the gardens fronting the Louvre, stopping now and then to sit and soak up the sights and sounds, until I got to the Place de la Concorde which put me at the foot of the Champs Élysées.