Next up at the Louvre 9-17-15

Today our plan was to go to the Louvre and see things that were of interest to Pat and Barb, so we got on the bus and headed into town only to be dumped out early.  It turned out that there was a street demonstration going on that was blocking the Rue de Rivoli, the unions associated with one of the hospitals were protesting some, to us, unknown issue and they had the street blocked for several blocks.  So we had to walk from where our bus terminated to a spot beyond the demonstrations and catch another bus that was running from that point to a stop near the Louvre.
We were pretty surprised yesterday when we saw that they had changed the way the line works for getting into the museum, they have built an entire building just outside the pyramid and they are making everyone go through it for a security check.  Hopefully it's a temporary situation because the building is really an eyesore.   Knowing this and having previously bought tickets we were able to go into a special side entrance for members and take Barb and Pat with us so it took virtually no time to get in.   Our first objective was to take them to see La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) so we found an elevator that took us right up to a room that opened into that gallery.   Deb and I gave them a strategy for getting up to the front to be able to see it most advantageously, and within 10 minutes they were able to move to the front and get a good look and take a closeup.   After they got out of the melee we looked at the beautiful "Wedding Feast at Cana" of Veronese for several minutes before going out into the long gallery to look at the 5 additional Da Vinci paintings owned by the Louvre currently on display.  Some of them are certainly the equal of the Mona Lisa, but they don't get the same press.
 Next we made our way through the gallery looking at several paintings and chatting about them, before we arrived at the "Winged Victory of Samothrace" (Nike) where we spent several minutes looking at it.  Deb explained to them why it's so important and artistically extraordinary.  
Pat expressed interest in seeing Roman and Greek sculpture so we went over to begin with the Venus and work through several galleries looking at beautiful works.  I was taken by this bust of the Empress Livia, it looks as if it could have been sculpted in the 1930's


Next on our agenda was a trip through the Egyptian collections to see many of the sarcophagi resident in the museum, which was Barb's interest, how could we go wrong? We had a wonderful stroll through the Egyptian collection looking at virtually everything on offer.





Finally, we took them through the Middle-East collection to see the beautiful stuff from Darius' palace at Susa, and the entry gates from the palace at Babylon.



We were pretty well played out by the end of this little expedition and opted to head for home after this.