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When you think of world-class museums, you must think of the Musée du Louvre. Included in its collections are such memorable pieces as Venus de Milo, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and the Hammurabi Code stele. The museum is really more like 20 museums housed in one place! You could go with a very specific goal in mind (like 15th century French painting or Iranian archaeology), spend all day in just that area, and still leave with an overloaded brain.

With this in mind, we chose ahead of time the pieces we wanted to see. That way we could make sure to highlight those, and then discover other great art along the way. As it worked out, we spent three and a half hours in the Louvre and didn’t even scratch the surface of the 30,000 pieces on display.

We arrived at the museum around 8:10 AM, and were very close to the front of the line. By the time the museum opened at 9 the line wrapped all the way into the next courtyard (a full city block away). We bee-lined to the Italian paintings, hoping to gaze at Mona Lisa before a large crowd gathered. It is an amazing piece (but oh so small); her expression is so subtle and vague it’s hard to tell whether she is pouting or smirking.

We tramped through Italian and Spanish paintings, then visited Napoleon’s apartments. These have been preserved as when he occupied the palace where the museum is today. The rooms were lavishly decorated and ornate to the maximum with gold and crystal everywhere. Obnoxiously ornate one might say.

From there we viewed paintings by the Flemish masters (Van Eyck, Rembrandt), French paintings from the 16-18th centuries (including one of the first true portraits, Jean II Le Bon, which is a piece I studied in school and still one of my favorites). (View the piece.)

After the paintings we switched gears to Mesopotamian archaeology and visited the Hammurabi stele. It is amazing to look at; the stele is a black pillar about 7 feet tall packed with cuneiform writing. The contents of the writing are the Hammurabi Code, laws set in place to govern Mesopotamian civilization. One of the first set of written laws and a set that has directly influenced modern laws.

Leaving the museum, we walked along the Seine to Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s such a cool-looking church! It is famous as the setting of Joan of Arc’s trial, Napoleon’s papal coronation and Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Just behind it, on a bridge, a live jazz band was playing and we stopped to listen. They are the “Wedding Band”, and I am fairly sure they were American: guitar, soprano sax, upright bass, drums, and a really good trombone player. Excellent musicians they had everyone tapping their toes.

One of Erin’s wishes while visiting Paris was to follow in the footsteps of some of her favorite writers that had lived here. So we rode the Metro to Boulevard Montparnasse, the area where Ernest Hemingway frequented with his cronies (James Joyce, Sylvia Beach, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein) between the World Wars. We walked past the cafés where they hung out, and explored some of the locales Hemingway wrote about in his book, A Moveable Feast.

Our walk eventually led us to Jardin du Luxembourg, a large park that encompasses playgrounds, tennis courts, ping-pong tables, pony rides, a band shell, and a large pond that rents small wooden sailboats. It was fun to watch the kids sail their boats across the pond! The Jardin provides chairs for its visitors, so we camped out in a couple of recliners by the pond and watched the parade of life. The Palace that the garden surrounds was not always so idyllic as it was the headquarters of the Nazi’s Luftwaffe during WWII.

On our way to the Metro we heard yet another live jazz band, this time French, playing clarinet, trumpet, banjo, upright bass, and washboard (the percussionist wore the washboard around his neck and supported it with his rather large belly). They were really good, and they even played a song I knew, Hello Dolly. A couple started to dance; ah, Paris!

For our last dinner in Paris, we searched for a local restaurant with great prices and authentic fare. We found “Au 24” two blocks from our hotel. The proprietor seated us, took our order, served (and we think cooked our food)—a one woman show! The restaurant was small and cozy; it held only about 15 people at 5 or 6 tables. It was packed with locals when we first went by. Thankfully some of them were just leaving and we slid into their still warm chairs.

We enjoyed the traditional French before dinner apéritif, then dug into a tomates à vinaigrette salad and a delicious vegetable soup with melted cheese on top. Our main courses were scrumptious: a cut of beef served at room temperature with au gratin potatoes and artichoke (for Erin) and a slab of white fish drizzled with coconut curry over rice (for Lance). We ended the meal with a cheese plate, coffee (for Lance), and calvados, a traditional drink from the Normandy region made of fermented apple juice. It was great to have a relaxing dinner at a low-key place: no dress code or snooty waiters looking down on us for our imperfect knowledge of culinary French. With food this good we hate to leave…All the bad things people say about Paris aren’t true, its a wonderful place!

Tomorrow we take the train to Avignon, a town in southern France. It’s a great introduction for Erin to one of the most beautiful places on Earth: Provence.