Something old, Something New 8-19-15

Yesterday Jim expressed interest in going to the Louvre today, so we went there today.  His major interest was to see the stele containing the "Code of Hammurabi", a 4000 year old codification of laws by the early Babylonian emperor Hammurabi.

We've not gone into the Mesopotamian collection at the Louvre before so this was all new for us. The stele was the first expression of the "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" approach to law making.  Lots of  "and the penalty will be death" amongst these laws, but there was no ambiguity.  I did like the article dealing with witchcraft, and it was the first one. and the penalty of death. Though after 4000 years I'd hoped for better than to hear that 2 people were killed in Africa for witchcraft a couple days ago.
 But we did see some spectacular Mesopotamian artifacts.  Both Deb and I had to upbraid people for touching the ancient carvings, what the hell?  I got after one woman for leaning against a beautiful wall carving so her husband could take her picture! My curmudgeon meter is starting to peg, what are they thinking?


After these rooms we made our way over to the Winged Victory of Samothrace (Nike) it seems more spectacular every time I see it.  It was getting crowded but we went to the adjoining rooms to see the Botticelli murals that were rescued from a villa in Rome slated for demolition.  Next on the agenda was lunch so we worked our way through the two upper galleries containing the cream of the French Classic and Romantic paintings over to the cafe at the west end of the southern wing and ate out on the open patio overlooking the glass pyramid.

From the lunch cafe it's a short walk to the room containing La Joconde (Mona Lisa) and predictably it was a zoo, I took a photo of Jim here but it was blurry so no joy.  We planned to exit the museum at the Lion port, but IT WAS CLOSED!  So we had to make our way back through the museum to the pyramid to exit, again a zoo.
After we were out we headed across the street to the Tuileries for a stroll through there out to the Place de la Concorde.   We stopped on the way at one of the cafes in the Tuileries for a sit down in the shade and a little beer as the sun was now out and it was getting quite warm.   Once we had visited Concorde Jim and I boarded the Metro for a quick ride back to where we would catch the bus for home, while Deb walked back through the gardens.  Once we had our rendezvous we walked over to see St. Germain en Auxerrois to see the medieval porch and the church itself.  
Another place on Jim's list was Le Fumoir, a brasserie across from the Louvre and just next to the church, so we stopped there for another beer and waited for our bus, which arrived in due time.  We boarded the bus for the apartment and made it home in good order.