Because my regular camera ran out of batteries, I took the pictures in
the latter half of the day with my cell phone camera. This explains the
varying quality of the images.
Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Morning Stroll
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| Nice railings and balconies on Rue de Bretagne.
| A cheese shop in the street.
| A shop with an unusually wide variety of quiches and tarts.
| A meat shop.
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| Breakfast
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| We sat and had breakfast at Cafe Charlot.
| We sat outside in this section of the cafe.
| My croissant (decent) and Di Yin's bread with (good quality) butter.
| We decided that wasn't quite enough for breakfast, so when we spotted a
bakery, Ronde des Pains, we decided to buy something else.
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| Di Yin holding our goods: a Viennoise chocolate, basically a light,
sweet bread with lots of chocolate chips inside. Good.
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| Louvre: Outside
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| Looking up from the Louvre's main entrance through I.M. Pei's pyramid at
one of the museum's buildings.
| Ditto.
| A high-resolution photograph of the Louvre's main above-ground
courtyard, taken from an upper-floor gallery. Excellent! Shows
some of the ornate Louvre buildings, I.M. Pei's large glass pyramid and
three baby pyramids, the fountains, scattered people in the plaza, and
the Arc de Trionoge du Carrousel. (Note: this isn't the larger, more
famous Arc de Triomphe.)
| Peeking through a window into another Louvre courtyard: Cour Carree.
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| The nicest roundabout in Europe?
| The Arc de Trionoge du Carrousel. High-resolution. It's immediately to
the left of the roundabout in the previous picture. To the left is the
edge of the Jardin du Carrousel / Jardin des Tuileries.
| A close-up of the Arc de Trionoge du Carrousel. Gold and bronze
statues, how odd.
| A close-up of some of the statues and flourish on one corner of one of
the Louvre's wings.
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| Railing-arch-small-pyramid-large-pyramid-Louvre. Neat composition.
| Another perspective on the Louvre's main courtyard and its glass
pyramid.
| The south side of the Louvre. The upper floors are part of the museum.
The gateways lead to the previously photographed roundabout near the
Louvre.
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| Louvre: Inside
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| The medieval, original part of the Louvre was built to defend medieval
Paris (which at the time was on a nearby island in the Seine). On the
right are castle walls; on the left are moat walls.
| A model of the original Louvre fortress.
| The Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile does seem enigmatic in person.
It never did to me in photographs or prints I've seen.
| The Mona Lisa's crowd on a weekday morning.
Two hours later
it was even more crowded.
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Di Yin wondered whether the Mona Lisa currently on display is the
real one. (The Mona Lisa is perpetually on display, but museums
must cycle their artwork for preservation reasons, allowing pieces to
rest in the dark.)
| Venus de Milo is a great statue. The sculptor (no one knows who
it is!) did a nice job with the folds of fabric.
| The Winged Victory of Samothrace. When I first walked by it, I
didn't notice the statue is on a ship.
According to the audio guide, this sculpture only became famous
after it was placed in a prominent place in the Louvre in 1884.
| A gallery of large paintings. Many are by Ingres.
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| The huge Coronation of Napoleon, the biggest painting in a
gallery of big paintings.
| The ceiling in the part of the Louvre that was formerly the apartments
of Anne of Austria. (Recall that the Louvre was a royal building.)
| A nice hall of Roman sculptures.
| What does this mean? Flying upper-bodies.
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| The explanation (in French), which doesn't actually explain why the
artist drew the deliverer with only an upper body.
| The Grande Galerie.
| Some people in the galleries painted reproductions of works of art.
Excellent for its composition.
| Another painting for my collection of paintings of paintings/galleries.
In this case, the gallery is of scenes in Rome. I took this in
high-resolution. Look at the full-sized to appreciate the details.
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