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

Paris-London Trip - Day 4

Day 4 is a very excited day for us, cause we doing to Eiffel, the icon of Paris. We wake up early in the morning to prevent jam with those crazy tourists. There are four escalator going up to Eiffel, but trust me, it is much faster going up using staircase. It’s not much people when we reach Eiffel, but not much doesn’t mean very little. We bought a ticket to going up to 1st and 2nd platform thru staircase. If you think it’s free to use the staircase, then you are wrong, because nothing is free in Paris. It cost me around €4 to use their staircase.

The Eiffel Tower

While climbing up to the tower, you can see some nice view around the Eiffel. Pity my wife, she got acrophobia :)

View from the Eiffel Tower

Talking about Eiffel, according to the wiki, it is the most visited paid monument in the world. It’s a pure steel structure tower, built from 18,038 pieces of puddle iron and 2.5 million rivets. Salute to the engineer who designs it, Gustave Eiffel. Well, he also designs the other world icon of New York, the armature for the Statue of Liberty.

Going up to the top platform can only thru the life which cost around €5. I need to pull my wife to going up there :p

After the Eiffel, we walk around the Seine River because we want to see another great statue, the Statue of Liberty. It’s replicas of the New York Statue of Liberty and located at Île des Cygnes on Seine River. Very quiet place and not much people knew that there is a Statue of Liberty on this “island”.

Statue of Liberty, opps... my wife :p

Status of Liberty and my wife ^^

The next stop is La Concorde. It’s a public square in Paris, and its full name is call Place de la Concorde, mean the harmonic square. The original name of this place is Place Louis XV. During the French revolution, it was called Place de la Revolution, and King Louis XVI was executed using guillotine at this place.

The Obelisk of Luxor is one standing on the middle of the square, and you can see the Arc de Triomphe clearly from the square. My wife notices a black shadow behind the Arc de Triomphe and ask me what is that. After looking at the map, I suddenly hate Napoleon. It’s the Grande Arche located at La Defense, which is about 7km from la Concorde.

You can see the Arc de Triomphe and the black shadow behind it is the Grande Arche 

The Luxor Obelisk and Eiffel Tower

Luxor Obelisk is a gift from Egypt by Muhammad Ali pasha, the Wali and self-proclaimed Khedive of Egypt. It is originally standing at the entrance of Luxor Temple. Muhammad Ali was offering two obelisks to King Louis-Philippe, but due to the limit of technology that time, only one obelisk is moving to Paris, leaving the other obelisk at Egypt due to too huge to move. Hope, some day I can go to Egypt and capture the second obelisk.

Next to la Concorde is the park call Jardin des Tuileries, the Tuileries Garden. It’s a huge garden and next to the garden is the one of the most famous museum, the Louvre Musuem.

The Kiss by Rodin

We walk along the Seine River and reached Pont Alexandre III, there are two sculptures located at two side of the bridge. Next to the bridge is the Grand Palais (Big Palace) and Petit Palais (Small Palace). Grand Palais is an exhibition hall and Petit Palais is a museum. Didn’t enter to both of the building because it’s already 5pm and most of the Paris museums close at 5pm.

The sculpture at Pont Alexandre III

The another sculpture at Pont Alexandre III

The Petit Palais

Further walking down the street, we reached to Avenue des Champs Elysees, where LV building is located. Better use some excuse to divert wife’s eyeing. So, I suggest to my wife that we going to look for China town in Paris.

Maybe I should call it Asian town, because that area is basically mixed of Chinese and Islamic shops. The area is near Belleville. There is not significant demarcation of the China town but you can see lots of Chinese writing shop lot around the area, and also lots of halal food, Indian food around that area. At that area, we discovered the sister of Statue of Liberty, the Statue of Democracy.

We bought a box of strawberry and it’s so cheap. The only food that I think worth to buy in Paris is the strawberry, for only €1.50 , you can enjoy 500g of fresh strawberry, much much much cheaper that those strawberry at Cameron highland.