Lindsey in Paris: Afternoon at the Louvre

I spent a lovely, lazy afternoon in the Tuileries Gardens yesterday. I intended to sit down for just a little while, but the shining sun convinced me to stay and I didn’t look at the time until three hours later! I ate some strawberry ice cream, read my guidebook to the Louvre, and just generally enjoyed being warm. I was only interrupted once, when an older man asked for the chair next to mine and then, upon finding out my French is less than perfect, said “you should speak French because you look French” and then walked away with the chair. Pretty funny - but I guess that’s a good of a reason as any other.

When I finally got up, I still had a few hours in the Louvre. And actually, after spending so much time reading the guidebook, I was totally prepared - so it worked out perfectly. The Dutch paintings are generally my favorite - Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer - but I spent some time in the German rooms and they were also pretty impressive, particularly the portraits by Hans Holbein. There were some Scandinavian paintings that were interesting too, including some landscapes that looked almost impressionist. Although most exciting for me was a painting by Ambrosius Bosschaert called Bouquet of Flowers in an Arch because he pioneered flower painting, and they’re my ultimate favorite (in terms of just pleasing aesthetics, genre painting takes the prize overall). So it was like seeing one of the first ones ever! I was expecting it to be of pretty big scale, maybe because of the importance I placed on it, but it was tiny! And it was just tucked away in a corner of a side room, but it was still amazing.

Anyway, I just checked the time and I have to go get ready for the ballet this afternoon! And fireworks tonight at Sacre Coeur (I thought it was earlier in the week, but its tonight!) - it going to be a super exciting Saturday!

Here are some pictures from yesterday. I'm generally not a huge fan of photographing paintings, but sometimes its interesting to isolate certain elements of an image. I found some interesting clothes in a group of paintings - although I couldn't find the painter's name, I think they weren't accredited to anyone or maybe I didn't look hard enough. Anyway, its also interesting to take a picture of the room rather than individual paintings, just because I like the feel of museums. But these pictures aren't very good, my camera is being super sucky lately...