Day 3

Personally this is the day I've been waiting for since we had the idea to visit Paris 'coz this is the day we visit Louvre, the most prestigious museum in the world! Not only it features fantastic art works, it also had a rich history and great architecture. The glass pyramid is just one notable example in the long history of amazing addition made to this palace-turned-museum. Since the building has been rebuilt so many times and has so many sub-component, navigating through the maze-like museum is not an easy task. Even though I've spent days in advance reading "The Pocket Louvre" to try to figure out our path, I still had a hard time following it 'coz which sections would be closed temporarily wasn't something the author able to predict. (Side note: in an American museum, there would probably be lots of signs directing people to different interest area. Not Louvre. I guess the French mentality is you're free to navigate whichever way you like and they don't wanna seed any idea in you. Of course, none of the American museum is as big and complicated.)

Louvre 

We had lunch at Cafe Marly, which is on the side of the Richelieu wing, and has a great view of the pyramid and the Napoleon courtyard. While the view was nice, I don't have anything good to say about the service: when we ordered the sandwich, we specifically asked whether it has tomato. We were told there's minimal tomato in it but it's in fact the opposite! And the task the manager was most actively performing was watching for visitors not dining there but trying to sneak in for the bathroom. Enuff said. Of course this didn't ruin a single bit of our Louvre experience, of great architecture and art inside the museum. The sculptures and paintings were most impressive IMO. I love the works by David and Michelangelo the most. After 3 hours of "wow" and "oh" and lots of walking and climbing up and down stairs, we're exhausted and reluctantly said good bye.

In the evening, I visited Pompidou Center, which is considered among the "Big 3" art museums in Paris (#1 Louvre, #2 d'Orsay) To be honest, like lots of people from Hong Kong, the first time I heard of it was its link to the West Kowloon Art development project. Its name was mentioned along side Guggenheim, another museum organization of which the model of operation was studied in HK. This museum's specialty is modern art (while d'Orsay specialize in mid-19th to early 20th century art and Louvre before that) Too bad it's 5th floor, which features their most famous collections (Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky), was closed when I visited! They did have a large sign (with small prints) "warning" visitors about this near the ticket booth but I was too excited and rushed to buy tix without reading that :( You bet how disappointed I was! Even so, there were some gems among the rest of these less famous works.

Pompidou 

I finished my visit in an hour and it was 7:30pm. (American) Time for dinner! My wife and I planned to buy some food to-go (for mom-in-law and Madeline) but it was surprisingly hard to find! Most sandwich places closed after 8pm. Even the supermarket closed at 8:30! Of course our American friend, McDonald that is, came to rescue! As much as it's criticized, you can't deny McD provides a consistent level (no matter how low that is) of quality of food throughout the world. You pretty much have a good idea of what you get from McD, wherever in the world you are. Hey, it's successful for a reason.