Trip with Jiekai - Part 9
Day 4 - Paris (3/4) - Misc, Louvre
supplemented with some of Jiekai's pictures in lieu of mine, which have been lost for eternity due to his cockitude. Many of the Louvre pictures can be googled.

*Place de la Bastille with the July Column* (This picture belongs to the previous day but I forgot)
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude. Jiekai's ersatz picture:



In the morning, I left Jiekai and went to Notre Dame to take some photos, since I'd left early 2 days before to get my spare batteries. Unfortunately, those pictures have been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Notre Dame rose window*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

On the way from Notre Dame to the Obelisk, I finally managed to get a shot of the cock car after missing a chance to get it on film at least thrice! I also saw one parked later. Unfortunately, those pictures have been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude, but I've one picture of the car from Munich (IIRC). I wonder if the Pink Panther was released in France. Then again, we all know the French have no sense of humour.


Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde
I had a better version but it has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude
I've seen the ones in New York and London, so it was fitting that I go see the last one as well.

*Fountain in the Place de la Concorde*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

I saw "Philosophie Magazine" at a newsstand. Trust the French. I also saw "Alternative economiques" - maybe it proclaims that a state with strict labour laws can have low unemployment. Surprisingly enough, that newsstand (near the Louvre) also had the Economist, so.

I then proceeded to the Louvre. In the museum card brochure, it'd said that Monday was one of its late days, when it would close at 9:45pm. There was a small chance that, on meeting Jiekai at 1pm, I'd agree to go out and get a famous Berthillon ice cream with him and walk a bit, but on arrival I found that they'd played me out and changed the late days. The place would then close at 6pm that day instead. I then resolved to spend the rest of the day there, completing my pilgrimage to the three great art museums in the world (the other two, of course, being the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

At the Louvre, flash photography is "strongly discouraged". That's a nice touch, but unfortunately there's no student price for admission (it's €8.50 as well). Actually it's quite ridiculous to charge €8.50 for a day's admission - the place is so big it's impossible to see in one day. What they should do is make the ticket valid for 2 or 3 days, so people can properly return to see all the exhibits. But of course that would impact their cash flow, so. For some reason, admission's free for those who're unemployed (on presentation of a document from the last 6 months). Perhaps they hope that visiting the Louvre will inspire people to work. Or maybe *that*'s why I saw so many people in the Louvre doing sketches of exhibits - it's the solution to their unemployment problems!

*Cour Marly - Hall with Neo-classical French sculpture*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude
While I was sitting on a chair in the Cour Marly, something very strange happened. A group of french girls happened by and one asked to take my picture. Who knows what it's being used for now? [Someone: maybe they come from a rural village and haven't seen a chink before. maybe they think you're william hung]


Sculpture


Sculpture


Louvre Model


Statue


Pyramid outside the Louvre


Tomb of Philippe Pot - Robed pallbearers bearing the body of a dead Knight, with 10th Century sculptures.

*Colombe - St George and the Dragon*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Bontemps - Tomb of Charles de Maigroy (sp?)*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

I think the British Museum is the best of the 3 museums. There's no entrance fee, explicit or otherwise (read: The Met's Ticket Counter disguised as a 'Donation Booth'), most of the exhibits are not enclosed or encased (glass around the Rosetta Stone notwithstanding - luckily I saw it before the box came up around it) and everything is in English (damn French). Really, except for the must-see items, you get diminishing marginal utility from visiting the other 2 (not to say that I regret visiting them). For example, all 3 museums, IIRC, have a reconstructed Egyptian tomb inside of which are mounted carvings as they would've been in a real tomb.

*Fontaine de Diane*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Pilon - Vierge de Douleur*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Puget - Alexandre et Diogene*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Slodtz - Annibal*
Down with SPQR! (The photo shows Hannibal driving a SPQR standard into the soil)
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Duret - Vendangeur improvisant sur un sujet comique*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Dantan - Jeune baigneur jouant avec un chien*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

Falconet's stupid Cupid thing was here also (the sculpture of cupid with a hand on his chin that I saw in the Rijksmuseum).

*Puget - Perseus and Andromeda*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

There was a notice in one toilet about destroying unattended objects which the security personnel thought a danger to security. Perhaps they were afraid of what fundies would do after reading the Da Vinci Code and discovering that Louvre was a hotbed of blasphemous artefacts. Or maybe they feared Muslim fanatics destroying the Islamic Art collection (see below).


Babylonian Cock. Khorsabad Sculptures (?)

The Code of Hammurabi was smaller than I thought - it was a bit taller than me. Somehow I had the impression that it'd be twice as tall. Perhaps important objects are magnified in the imagination:


The Code of Hammurabi
For some reason the idiot took it from the side. Mine was better but it has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Lion

Even in the Louvre, almost everything was in French. This was particularly galling with the exhibits, which were all labelled only in French. Some rooms had information sheets, but not all (and running around trying to match the sheets to the exhibits is tiresome). In any case, there were as many English information sheets as German, Japanese, Spanish and the like. Considering that most people would want the English ones, this is ridiculous. Some evil museum staff member had also stolen the English information sheets from some rooms - I never knew that the dislike of English goes so far in France that they'd actually sabotage their own museums just to make English-speaking visitors feel miserable!


Capital of a column of the Audience chamber in the palace of Darius I


Walk through the Egyptian Gallery

The Sphinx from the palace of Darius was the first coloured sphinx that I've ever seen!

*Mummified crocodile*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.


Preserved body (Mummy sans wrappings?)

*Stele for Thebes*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.

*Osiris, 4th century BC*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.

*18th Dynasty harp*
The amazing thing about this is that the strings are intact! Hurrah for the desert!
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.


Grand Sphinx of Tanis


Kneeling scribe

The Egyptian gallery was so big that for the Pharaonic collection, it had a thematic circuit on one level and a chronological circuit on another. Uhh.


Venus de Milo
Mine was better but it has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Hercules et Telephe, 1st-2nd ap. JC (damn French can't use BC/AD)*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.

I think the Louvre must be the first place where I've seen Greek/Roman sculpture where the penises are not broken off. Wth.

*The Three Graces, 2nd c. AD copy from Rome*
I'm quite sure there's a Greek sculpture called The Three Graces, where their arms and probably their heads are broken off, but some reason the only reference I can find to a statue by this name online is the 1799 one in the Hermitage
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.

*Caryatides*
Very nice caryatides from the Salle des Caryatides.
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.

*Fireplace sculpture*
In the Salle des Caryatides.
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude.


I don't know why so many French like to wear berets. I should've brought mine along. Black also.


Cock files:

- "Do I actually stutter?"