A quiet day before Easter 4-4-15

Today was a fairly quiet day with a few chores and a visit to the Louvre. One thing for certain, it seems that each day the Louvre gets more and more crowded and being the weekend as well it was PACKED!  We were looking at a hotel as a possible place to stay for visitors and then walked from Place Bastille to the Louve through the Place de Vosges and along the Rue Francois Miron to get there. 

The Place de Vosges is one of the oldest planned squares in Paris built in 1605-1612 by Henri IV, with the house fronts all built to the same design.  We've stayed at the small Hotel Place de Vosges a few times on previous visits and have always loved the square.





Further along we turned into the rue Francois Miron which is one of the medieval streets right near the Hotel de Ville.  It has two of the oldest buildings still extant in Paris, 16th century half-timber buildings with leaning walls and loads of charm.  On the corner building is the street sign but right next to it is the remnant of the original street sign cut into the stone and all but obliterated.






This trip to the Louvre took us up to look at Northern European paintings by such luminaries as; Rubens, Franz Hals, David Tenniers,  and Van Dyck among others. 





Rene Descartes by Hals

It was a very relaxing group of rooms that we passed through and along the way I spotted a couple of perhaps 8-9 year old girls taking pictures with their smart phones.   I found it to be quite interesting that they were taking pictures and discussing the paintings, at their age I was still trying to learn how to spell painting let alone talking with someone else about one. 




Tomorrow if the weather is nice we will walk out along the canal to the North to investigate what lies beyond our little corner of Paris.