paris, france

well, after our fantastic view in delphi, we pay with a rather bare room in paris. i took this picture because it was so bland it looked also computer generated.

our main stop in paris was the louvre. though my favorite statue is 'la pieta' in rome, ren's fav was this statue of psyche & cupid. psyche (the godly image of mind) had just been poisoned and cupid (the godly image of love) came to save the day.

we were very lucky to be some of the first people in the museum (more on that later) and as such the first rooms we entered were actually empty! i was able to get shots such as this with no-one else around. these are not your average statues either, the two in the middle are unfinished works by the master michangelo himself!

here is the mighty emporer tiberius! we saw a lot of him. i also have a huge book about this guy and friends but it is packed at the bottom of one of my boxes of books and since we haven't fully unpacked yet i can't find it and tell you all interesting amazing facts about his life. but when i do find it i'll add some, i promise! :)

here is another famous and much photographed statue. la venus de milo. unforunately it hasn't stood up the last couple of hundred years too well. it is very beautiful still and one of the rare statues of the time that was carved to be viewed from all angles.

here is some amazing detail on another psyche and cupid statue. this is really a cupid and butterfly statue but psyche is often protrayed as a butterfly.

the story of this statue depicts how love (cupid) tempts the mind (psyche) with beauty (a rose) but then captures it (cupid pinching the wings). believe me, i would have never guessed this without the ten dollar audio tour :)

here is the view from the cafe in the louvre and look at that big stream of ants! well, not actually ants, this the line to get in. it got to be about 4 times as long as this when we saw it at it's worse.

we came through one of the new entrances straight from the train station and after waiting about 10 seconds behind about 20 people noticed an empty credit card ticket vending machine and just walked up and brought our tickets and missed the lines completely! horrah for us!

here is a cabinet from 1635. there was quite a bit of furniture in the louvre and we didn't get to see any elsewhere.

this is one of the louvre's most famous paintings, leonardo da vinci's 'the mona lisa'. it is quite a bit more impressive in real life than i expected it to be, the colours are very intense. even more interesting though was the amount of people crowding around it! we saw so many run straight to get to it, past the dozen or so other da vinci's the lourve has without even a sidewards glance.

here is st pierre painted by barbieri back in 1666. this was another amazing painting. we saw just so many painting here in eight hours, it is hard to give a good sample.

venus et les graces was painted on stone by botticelli even further back in 1484! it is a real shame that parts of it are falling off, but i suppose it is over 500 years old.

there are a couple of other famous landmarks in france and this is one of them! tower la eiffel! we walked up to the second story but didn't take the lift all the way to the top

most museums are enormous and take all day to wander around and even then you feel rushed and miss out of quite a bit. one different musuem is the quite small rodin museum focusing only on, well, rodin. probably his most famous piece is this one, 'the thinker'

there are also quite a few churches scattered about (as is the case for most of europe) here is notre dame! it has the most awesome scary gargoyles!

others things to looks at!
next stop, london, again!
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