paris day 3
breakfast
Since we had time this morning we decided to forego the really bad hotel breakfast and visited a couple of different cafes on the way to visit the Louvre museum.
Louvre Museum
We purchased skip-the-line tickets to the Louvre which also included being taken to the Mona Lisa. After seeing the line we were really glad we were able to skip what looked to be at least a two-hour wait to get in. We were not too worried about being taken to the Mona Lisa, but that is what was included. We did see the Mona Lisa off in the distance, a small painted head beyond a large group of real heads. After a few hours of roaming around the Louvre and seeing a few things we were interested in, we headed out for the rest of the day.
Lunch, exploring, more art
After leaving the Louvre, we went on the search for lunch. Once lunch was completed, we headed to the Gustave Moreau Museum and along the way discovered a nice arcade with unique shops. We stopped to buy some local photographs at a small photo gallery. The Museum is dedicated to Gustave Moreau – a 17th-century Symbolist painter that quickly came to prominence only to grow reclusive in later years after criticisms in the press were severe. He was often reluctant to sell his work, seldom exhibited, and turned down a number of prestigious offers, including exhibition invitations, and rejected the post of a professor at Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In the 1960s and 70s, his work saw a resurgence and he is now considered one of the most important symbolist painters. The museum is housed in the house and studio where he lived and painted. Upon his death, he left the house and all contents to the state in hopes it would be turned into a museum. He left behind 15,000 paintings, drawings, and sketches.
Dinner
We had reservations at Le Georges on the roof of The Centre Pompidou with panoramic skyline views of Paris. We had high expectations for dinner and they were not met, at all. We seemed to get the waitstaff that was on her first day. All of the tables around us were receiving a completely different experience than we received. The food was average and the restaurant itself is in a glass bubble so it was quite warm.
