Paris-London Trip - Day 5

The 5th day is Wednesday, on Wednesday and Friday, Louvre Museum will open until 9pm and for other day, it will only open until 5pm. So, today is our museum day. If you are museum maniac, you can get museum pass and enter to almost all the museum in Paris for free. If I’m not mistaken, the two days museum pass cost €32. You may check the detail here. Well, it definitely save some entrance fees if you plan to visit other museums in Paris. However, my target is Louvre Museum and the entrance fee is only €9, so not worth for me to get the pass. Anyway, it is very much depend on how you plan your Paris visit.

Actually we plan to visit Rodin museum, but I know I’m going to take few hours if I went there and I may miss the Louvre Museum. So, I told my wife that we go to visit Picasso before go to Louvre Museum because I heard they can allow you to visit the corridor for only €1, but I’m not sure how true is that cause I can’t found the detail at the office website.

We went to Picasso Museum and it requires some walking since it is located in the residence area. When we reached there, we found that the museum is closed for renovation and will only open on year 2012. Too bad.

:(

So, we went back to the metro and went to Louvre Museum.

It’s a huge place and lots of people. We took almost ½ hours to get our tickets. The ticket didn’t include audio guide and you can rent an audio guide from the counter for €6. As usual, I don’t like those guides because it’s like reading a long history book and taking lots of time to tell you the story behind those collections.

I try to search the web about those famous collections in the Louvre Museum, hope it can give some explanations on the photos I’d took.

Milo of Croton

I believe you know this, I remember that when I'm at form 3, I study about the world history and one of the most famous subject is the Code of Hammurabi and I finally saw it with my bare eyes.

 Law Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon

Don't ask me, I don't know what is this also :p

Sarcophagus box of Ramesses III

One of the most famous collections in Louvre

Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo

Imperial group as Mars and Venus

Fighting Warrior

Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss

Mercury and Psyche

Dying Slave by Michelangelo

The Slave by Michelangelo

I can't remember what is this also :p

The Death of Sardanapalus

The Intervention of the Sabine Women

The Meal at the House of Simon

The Wedding Feast at Cana

This is another most famous collections in Louvre

Winged Victory of Samothrace

The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of the Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804

If you read my blog, you will remember this drawing, I love it so much. Empress Josephine is a very beautiful lady, too bad is that the story about Napoleon and Josephine is not a happy ending.

Again, the most famous drawing

Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo (Used to known as Mona Lisa)

My wife ^^, she is my tour guide also

We “finished” the museum around 8pm and after took some photos outside with the pyramid.

After resting in the park, we decided to go to have a look on the Eiffel Tower at night. You maybe surprise that I didn’t took much of night photo in this trip. Well, in April, the sun come out very early, even on 6am, it’s look like noon, and the sun start to go down around 9pm. So, if I want to take night photo, I may need to wait until 9pm and to get a really dark night shot, its start around 10pm.

Eiffel at night

Mona Lisa

Ok, before I start to write about my Paris-London trip, I want to share something about the painting of da Vinci, the Mona Lisa.

When I visit to Louvre museum and I saw hundred of peoples standing in front of the Mona Lisa and taking picture of it, and I change my zoom lens and standing behind these peoples and take this famous painting. Because the painting is so expensive, it is covered with a piece of glass, and you can see the reflection of the peoples at the bottom part of the photo. According to the wiki, about 6 million of peoples went to Louvre to see this painting every year O.O

At that time I wonder, what make this painting so famous. If you had visited to Louvre museum before, you will saw lot of very great, huge and colorful paintings hanging on the wall, and Mona Lisa is actually only 30" x 21" in size, and the color is actually quite dull. But I have to agree that da Vinci is definitely a better painter than me :p

So, I search the internet about the Mona Lisa painting and one of the answer is that, this is a revolution painting and lot of new styles and techniques of painting are used or created by the master Leonardo da Vinci.



The second question is that who is the lady in the picture? According to the wiki again, she is Lisa del Giocondo. So, who is she? Well, according to wiki again, she is a mother of six children and just an ordinary person.

Leonardo spent almost 16 years to finish this masterpiece and luckily he finish the drawing before he died. So, I have to respect this genius for his passion in his work.