Paris Trip Day 2 -The Louvre

I lived in Paris with my family from 1984 to 1987 in the Neuilly sur Seine area. I vaguely recall going to the Louvre, but in any case it has changed a lot in the past 30 years. For one thing, they have built a whole shopping centre underground between the metro station and the entrance of the Louvre. The crowds were incredible and of course security was really tight. We wisely purchased tickets through FNAC http://www.fnactickets.com/ ahead of time and picked them up at the local FNAC that was fortunately only 5 minutes from our apartment. Those who did not have tickets had to wait in a long line in the cold rain.

One of the nice things about visiting museums in Paris is that kids under the age of 18 are usually free. I think that it's a great idea, because with 4 children, we would be less inclined to visit museums if we had to pay for our kids.

We started off in the Egypt area, because I knew the kids would be interested in looking at mummies. I really don't remember the Louvre being so big. With the crowds, we had to keep an eye on the kids as they could easily be lost for a long, long time. We spent a good 3 hours roaming around the museum and looking for the most famous works of art. I'm not sure if the kids were really impressed, but they didn't complain, as there was always something to look at. Since Rylan, Nathan and Ciara are all into Greek mythology, they tried to spot the Greek gods represented in the art over the centuries.

By 3pm we were pretty hungry, but it was too cold and rainy to walk around and look for a restaurant, so we opted to eat in the Louvre cafeteria, which was almost all out of food. We purchased a few over-priced snacks to keep the kids happy and then Bob and I decided to take the kids back to the apartment. Mom and dad stayed in the Louvre to see some more exhibits. There were entire floors that we didn't even see. Well, maybe I'll be back in another 30 years and I can finally see the rest of the Louvre!