The 15-minute walk to Louvre museum
from Bateaux Mouches was a LIE. I googled it now and it says 29 minutes. Too
bad we did not have our phones with us then. We had Internet back in London,
thanks to the generous cousin, but here in Paris, we were navigating using good
ol’ maps. Or not. The map looked like a complicated calculus problem to me and even
Cheena gave up pretty quickly as well. So we decided we will play it by road
sense and follow the right direction.
Our decision to go exploring on our own
was a whim. Taking a package tour was a bad idea and taking a tour with an
Indian operator was even worse. We had elderly couples clinging on to us for
fear of getting lost and the constant loud chatter in Hindi was giving me a
headache. I decided I wasn't going to settle for an “Indian dinner” in an
Indian restaurant in Paris most likely serving North Indian. So we took the maps
and started walking. It was a lovely day indeed and we had fun walking and
crossing the WIDE streets of Paris.
We were walking under the bridges for a while and then we climbed up to walk on the roads. We were trying to look for signboards, but all of them were in French. I had an offline iPhone app called WordLens on my phone, which translates between common European languages. It looked pretty cool when I first installed it but in real, it was of little help so we were back to navigating with our huge map. We agreed to disagree and went back and forth some roads (streets?). While we were at it, we crossed various Parisian monuments and were walking through the neighbourhood of Champs-Élysées without even realizing it. Here is the shortest point-to-point Google map.
Our route may not have been the shortest route, but I highly recommend this route because it takes you through some of the most famous monuments of Paris. Or I suggest that you also just get lost and take a random route – you never know what you would find!
Champs-Élysées is like the Ginza of Tokyo or the Colaba of Mumbai I guess. It is famous for its theatres, café and luxury shops. The name is French for “Elysian Fields”, the paradise of dead heroes in Greek mythology. We noticed the Grand Palais, the large exhibition hall and museum complex in Champs-Élysées but were too tired to take pictures. I am sure we looked like silly tourists – with a map in hand and gaping at every building and interrupting coy couples asking for the route to the Louvre. But we were enjoying it. Our legs were begging us to take a break but Cheena would hear nothing of it until we reached the Louvre. It was already close to 5 pm and we were determined to get back to the hotel before it got too late. We were crossing roads hand in hand and I am sure we also jaywalked quite a bit. The Parisian rickshaws looked really cute and after trying to click a picture many times through our moving coach, I finally got down to click one in leisure.
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| Place de la Concorde with the Egyptian obelisk behind me |
Our next landmark was Place de la Concorde. I
INSISTED that Cheena take a picture of me here. I recognized the giant Egyptian
obelisk from the Bateaux Mouches map. It is one of two the
Egyptian government gave to the French in the 19th century. The other one
stayed in Egypt, too difficult and heavy to move to France with the technology
at that time. The Place de la Concorde is the biggest square in France and has
a lot of important sites in and around it in every direction. The arch bridge Pont
de la Concorde connects the square
to the Quai d’Orsay in the left bank of the River Seine.
From here on, I am going to name all the monuments
and landmarks that we saw while we were trying to reach Louvre. We did not
recognize ANY of these monuments while we were actually there, but frantic internet
searches revealed that we passed through a LOT of significant Parisian
structures.
 |
| Grand Bassin Octagonal |
We crossed the Grand Bassin Octagonal where a lot of Parisians and tourists alike
were relaxing. I would have loved to sit and relax there as well, but we had a
mission to accomplish. We kept walking and it was over 30 minutes since we
started, and the Louvre was still not in view. We were going through the
gorgeous Tuileries gardens with its
picturesque fountains and we interrupted two more people to confirm the route. The
Tuileries gardens were originally constructed as the gardens for the royal and
imperial Tuileries palace, the residence of French monarchs till 1871 when the Paris Commune burned it down.
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| The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel at a distance |
Before long, we were looking at the
back view of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the triumphal arch constructed to commemorate the victories of Napoleon. This
one was built almost 30 years before the more famous Arc de Triomphe. The arch
is the entranceway to the Place du Carrousel, a public square located
at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre Palace. I ran at the sight of
the Louvre pyramid! We were here at last.
The Louvre museum is housed in the Louvre
Palace, which used to be a fortress in the 12th century. Now, it
has an underground shopping mall along with the old remnants of the fortress in
the basement. With close to 10 million visitors every year, it is the most
visited museum in the year. It has tens of thousands of exhibits and we hardly
had an hour (museum closes at 6 pm) so we decided that we would stick only to
the Mona Lisa.
The icing on the cake
was when we waited in the ticket counter and, as we were about to buy the
ticket, the guy asked for our passports and said the tickets are free for
everyone under 26 on Friday evenings! So
we used that money to get audio guides instead and went looking for the section
that contained the Mona Lisa
Louvre
timings:
Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday:
open from 9am to 6pm.
Wednesday and Friday: open from 9am to
10pm!
Closed on Tuesdays.
Basic ticket price is €10.00
per person. Free for all under the age of 18. Free for all under the age of 26
on Friday evenings (so cool!)
Expenses:
·
Toilet - €1.00
·
Louvre Audio Guide - €10.00
for two
·
Souvenir - €3.80
·
Food at the Louvre (two sandwiches, a
bottle of water and a bottle of orange juice) - €17.90
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