22 May Paris

Off to the Louvre via the Metro first thing this morning.  We all either had passes or tickets so we went in by way of the stairs near the arch to avoid the long lines waiting at the Pyramid.  We had a delightful English woman named Janice to do our tour.  Our first highlight was this Sphinx, which is 1900 BC, 4K years old, weighing 28 tons, and made of pink granite.  We were informed you will find these ancient works with the noses destroyed as this was felt to  be the way to remove power.  The Louvre was  very warm, I did not realize very little of it is air conditioned.  I am guessing it must have been cooler weather when I was here in 2000.  The Mona Lisa is air conditioned, as is another wing, but other than that is is not.  We saw several highlights of the Louvre; you will recognize Aphrodite, then the Victoire de Samothrace or "Wings of Victory" which is 2nd century BC.  I had been told in the past that the "Wings" is the oldest Greek statue in the world, but our guide did not say this so perhaps an older one has been found since 2000, or it is not a fact.  I will check that one of these days.  After these and other highlights our tour was over.  However, after a brief lunch we went back in to the area of statues and stayed for a few  more hours.  We did some shopping in Louvre stores, they have a regular mall there now with all sorts of high-end stores.  My assignment was to find a card and gift wrap for the gifts we have for Rolinka tonight.  After that we had a leisurely walk through part of the gardens and a few shops along the street and the Metro back to the hotel.  We  rested and then got ready for the Metro trip to Rolinka's apartment here in Paris for dinner.  She and Antoine were very gracious to invite all of us to their home for the last dinner we would have together.  It was very nice and she seemed very touched by the gifts that we all contributed to get her.  Some of the ladies in the group were ingenious in picking out some special things she really wanted and liked; shoes her choice and size from the Mephisto store in Beaune and a heavy mortar and pestle from a kitchen shop there also.   The funny part were some doggie toys for her pup (who is huge at 5 months) and it was very entertaining to watch him!  One of the toys was an iBone, which really made her laugh since many in our group either had iPhone or iPod touch or some sort of device and wanting Wi-Fi at each stop.  Metro back to the hotel and attempted to use the phone card again with no success again.  I did this blog and was unable to post, falling into bed at 1am.  We will sleep in tomorrow for sure!