The bread experiment ended in the Louvre. One way to learn how to read the crazy map of
the Louvre is to have to find every toilette in the complex. Friday was our day at the Louvre. The best part of the day was trailing behind
Sterling as he discovered treasure after treasure that re-anchored him in the
European history studies that he loved. The coup of the day was the tablet of Hamarabi
(sp?). This is the first written code of law. The Hamarabi code has been an interest of his since Mr. Torres’ 8th
grade world studies class. It was
exciting for him to see the ‘real thing’ and deeply satisfying as a parent to
bring the two of them together.
Getting lost doesn’t skip generations…
Earlier I mentioned that the Louvre intimidates me. Part of this is based upon my experience at
19 in the underground section of the Egyptian works. I was very happy to see that this section was
closed for renovation during this visit.
However, there is another area in the Louvre that is devoted to ‘other’
Egyptian art. Sterling wanted to visit
this and I had happily turned map management over to him. Well, we found ourselves quite lost amongst
the dizzying twists and turns of this section of the museum. Once we realized the irony of this situation,
we were laughing so hard that tears flowed.
It isn’t so funny in the writing, but it will certainly become one of my
grandmother stories in the future.
To sum up the Louvre – we are going back once we return to
Paris. We are determined to re-visit the
Dutch masters at a slower pace and to spend most of the day in the Renaissance
art. Big, massive, enormous,
overwhelming, mind-numbing do not begin to describe the Louvre.
Bill has decided that Paris (and I expect this to expand to
include the Normandy coast) is addictive for a photographer. It is early morning as I write this and he is
out in the morning light taking photographs.
So, the days are very long right now. I forget that Paris is actually
north of New York (I always think of France as Southern Europe but that is not
really accurate). Anyway, the light
begins to break before 5 AM and it is dusk from about 6 PM until 11:00 PM, it
isn’t truly dark until after midnight.
So we are out walking at all hours and Bill is camera ready. His work is so beautiful; perhaps he will let
me share some photos here.
