The Metro, the Louvre, Notre Dame et tout le reste

We decided to try the Metro today, rather than walking down to the Louvre. There's a station just a few metres from our hotel (our hotel is the Opera Cadet in Rue Cadet, the station is Cadet). We just missed one train and the next one came about 10 seconds later!
We felt a bit smug as we used our Paris museum passes to get inside, bypassing the lengthy queues outside the glass pyramid.

The Louvre is unnervingly huge and maze-like and very crowded but the section we started to explore first (the Richelieu Wing) was quite serene. There were huge bronze and marble statues everywhere:

We realized we were near the Mona Lisa as hordes of frenzied tourists, armed with video cameras, DSLRs, compacts and iPhones came charging up the stairs by way of the Winged Victory of Samothrace and onto La Joconde, as the French call her:

The room where LJ is situated also contains the enormous (almost 10 x 7 metres) The Wedding at Canaan by Veronese but most eyes are on Mona. She's encased in bullet-proof glass now, with a cordon around the wall she's hanging on and the hordes crush in and snap away, flashes blazing. It's almost a disgusting spectacle and the crowds have probably got a lot worse since that stupid book so we almost decided to give her a miss. And yet, when you do see her, you're transfixed - she's got you immediately! You get chills. I've heard people express disappointment that it's not a large painting but it's life-size, and if it wasn't, the effect would be less moving. It's like she's established some strange and immediate rapport with you. Of course the eyes follow you around the room - most portraits' eyes do if that's what the artist has intended - but her eyes... You can see why she's transfixed all who's gazed upon her for the last 500 years.

While the crowds are unnerving you can still find yourself staring at a Raphael or a Titian up close with few people around you, something you'd never be able to do if paintings of this calibre came on tour to an Australian gallery. There are just so many works of art here. The French 19th century painting collection is staggering, with gigantic Delacroixs everywhere and the even bigger Raft of the Medusa by Géricault. I didn't realize how big Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus is:

We had to leave eventually so we made our way along the Seine to Notre Dame. It's free entry and once you're inside, you can't help thinking how such an imposing building, with its beautiful interior, affected the average Parisian worshiper 800 years ago!

The flying buttresses and gargoyles are fantastic too and there's a sculpture of St Denis, patron saint of Paris, holding his head in his hands, literally!

People feed the sparrows outside ND and the birds are very tame:

We walked back "home" past the Pompidou Centre and its adjoining play area:

via a beautiful and happening street called Rue des Petit Carreux, lined with bistros, restaurants and the usual assortment of Parisian food shops where we saw these pigs in a patisserie:

Tomorrow, the Musée d'Orsay.