The French Dispatch: Day Six

Braving the Louvre on a bank holiday

We did the Big Bus tour and decided that it would be best to get on the bus before checking out the Louvre. Deciding factors were being able to get an overview of the sights in the more popular tourist areas without exhausting ourselves and needing to use up the time before our 12:30pm tickets. Plus, the bus ticket included a river cruise that we could do post Louvre.

We hopped on the bus in the neighborhood near the Louvre and it began to make its way down a series of very long boulevards lined with very old and elaborately carved buildings. We seemed to be driving by the Louvre for a very long time, but one has to factor in the traffic lights for bicycles that are approximately every 200 meters.

After several turns down several boulevards, we began to see all the images from our high school French textbooks come to life. I managed to pick out Charles de Gaulle in front of a commemorative park.

After about a mile of souvenir stalls along the Seine, we turned onto the Champs Elysees and began to approach the Arc de Triomphe. As we rolled by the boutiques and the Louis Vuitton flagship store, I felt a chill. For the first time in my life, I was in a place where an actual Nazi army had marched.

Most of the passengers were focused on the money shot of seeing the Eiffel Tower. I was thinking that after seeing it my entire life as refrigerator magnets and scarf prints I would feel “over it”. However, as the bus maneuvered closer, I actually was stunned by the scale and beauty of all that ironwork in one place.

It’s the ADA. NOT the FDA

After many more twists and turns back down the enormous boulevards, we neared our destination of the Louvre. Like many situations in our travels, there is what would be convenient, and then there’s the way it’s done in France. Probably 95% of the Big Bus passengers were planning to visit the Louvre after disembarking, but we sailed right past the main entrance and were deposited on the street that ran parallel to one of its long, doorless facades.

As we walked back to the entrance it dawned on me that for a Monday, there seemed to be an awful lot of people trying to visit a museum. Finally we rounded the corner and saw thousands of people taking photos next to its giant glass pyramid. There seemed to be multiple lines for multiple types of groups. We asked anyone we could find holding a walkie talkie where to go and were vaguely waved in a direction where we would ask the next walkie holder. Eventually we were directed into a large arcade, and then followed the crowds until we found ourselves somehow in the lobby behind the pyramid. An incredibly gracious cafe cashier explained that today was a Monday holiday and that now explained the mobs of people everywhere.

My sister was having some trouble with walking so the plan was to get a wheelchair for her and her husband would push the chair to take some weight off of a bad knee. The chicest 75 year old woman I have ever seen set them up with a wheelchair in exchange for a drivers license and we were on our way.

Continuing French tradition, we were able to get into the Louvre, acquire a wheelchair and travel up to the “zero level” (ground floor) without having to show any proof of admission until we reached the Egyptian wing. We got though the metal detector and then began to try and find ourselves way to the top floor.

It seems that since the Louvre is a hodgepodge of a fortress, a palace and a national art repository, its architects were not really focused on syncing up the results in a coherent manner. It was more of a competition to see who could out-opulence who.

We tried asking the first guard how to reach the second floor, and followed their instructions to an elevator that was out of order. Then another guard, whose directions did get us to a working elevator…that only took us to the first floor.

It took half an hour of following red herring directions and indifferent signage, but at last we got to the second floor and found European Decorative Arts and a newfound appreciation for the American Disability Act.

The payoff was that the Louvre was exhibiting contemporary fashion in the decorative interiors that had inspired them. So, a good 2 in one deal!

Ironically, after all the stress of navigating the byzantine elevator arrangements, when we reached the Mona Lisa room a guard ushered us past the crowds until we were directly in front of her. Hundreds of smartphone camera flashes went off around us like we were on the red carpet at Cannes.

Afterwards, the four of us sat in the Louvre cafe trying to rehydrate after the miles of travertine marble floors and seeing legendary works of art in the flesh. We were panting with exhaustion. Our feet hurt, our backs were aching…but our high school French teachers would be proud.