He turns 14 today in Paris – not too shabby. We decided to celebrate by totally abusing our Museum Passes. We purchased the Paris Museum Pass yesterday (good for 4 days) which covers entrance fees to most museums and gives you “jump-to-the-head-of-the-queue” privileges. So we decided to try it. Following the advice of many guidebooks, we got an early start today and headed out to the Louvre. And at 9:10 this morning we waited through the short security line then waltzed right into the Louvre. First stop, the Mona Lisa. I confess that I have never understood why it is so famous and now that I’ve seen it in person, I *still* don’t understand what the big deal is! There were scads of paintings in that wing that impressed me way more! (The one of Napoleon crowning Josephine is really something!) But then again, I didn’t think the DaVinci code was so great either so apparently I’m missing something.
After the Mona Lisa, we checked out the Venus de Milo which was quite impressive. Then we wandered around to the stuff we were really interested in (Gillian likes the really *old* stuff… and pottery). My favorite was wandering through Napoleon’s apartments; they were really neat and apparently under appreciated – we had most of the rooms to ourselves! Here we had heard all about the horrible lines and how crowded it was and we had entire rooms to ourselves! Look: Empty halls in the Louvre One of the coolest things for me was Charlemagne’s sword (which we did have to share with a small Italian tour group.)
When we decided to head out toward the main part of the museum to see some of the French crown jewels, we found the crowds! Boy oh boy, were there crowds! By 11 a.m. the place was wall-to-wall people! So that was our cue to leave. And a short walk north found us at the Pompidou Center for a complete change of pace: modern art! There was a red rhinoceros, some piles of hay, a piano with a red cross blanket…. not really old master stuff. One cool thing though was the airplane made from bamboo shoots covered with 10,000 items confiscated from the Sao Paolo airport: knives, scissors, corkscrews, etc. It really was pretty cool!
So we’ve had our share of art and we’re back in the Latin Quarter for lunch at a Greek restaurant (Duncan’s choice being the birthday boy – he wanted keftes!) Then we’re exploring the Conciergerie which was used as a prison during the Revolution and housed Marie Antionette before she was beheaded. Pretty cool!
The birthday boy decides he hasn’t really had enough art so we’re off to the Picasso museum which is cool but like the one in Barcelona devoted to the artist, doesn’t really have any of his famous works. So it was a fairly short stop (Frank can only take so much Picasso!) before shuttling home. Duncan decides he wants to eat in for his birthday so we have another supermarche adventure and decide on some pasta for dinner. A fresh baguette, bag of salad and a bottle of red wine makes the meal and a stop at the patisserie for assorted tarts (in lieu of a birthday cake) and the evening is complete. (For those keeping track, today’s pedometer reading was 25, 040 or about 12 miles!)
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The Cannon Family's travel blog 
