The Tuilleries is for the Birds; Le Louvre Part II

We made another visit to the Louvre this week as well, first stopping to sit in the Tuilleries and eat some sandwiches. Several of our winged friends helped me finish mine. At first I just threw pieces of bread, cheese or meat down to them, which inevitably resulted in at least a 10-way fight until one tenacious fellow grabbed the whole piece and flew off, victorious, with his treasure in his beak, usually followed by at least one competitor in hot pursuit where I can only assume the bickering continued. After a while I figured out how to get them to line up next to me on the bench in an orderly fashion and wait for their piece. They were not shy. (Don’t worry, I washed my hands to avoid any bird flu contamination).

One little girl was so perfectly comfortable with us that she curled up on the arm rest next to me and took a nap. Too cute.

We spent our time in the Louvre this week primarily on the top floor of the Richelieu wing, which is where the Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer reside. We saw some beautiful paintings – the details in some of these paintings are just incredible. It gives me a headache just to try to focus in on the detail, I can’t imagine painting it.

We finished with a walk through one part of the sculpture wing.

And of course, finished off our day of high culture and art with a visit to McDonald’s. We have discovered that McDonald’s is our Wi-Fi savior in France when we are out and about and need a connection on our phones. Every McDonald’s is equipped with unlimited, free, wi-fi.

Parisian Tex-Mex

We finished off the week with a visit to a local cinema where we were able to view “Terminator Renaissance” on a screen slightly larger than a home theater. They haven’t quite been able to adapt their ancient architecture to be friendly with the idea of stadium seating, unfortunately. Prior to the movie as we were looking for a restaurant we spotted an awning that advertised “Tex-Mex”. We couldn’t resist the idea of trying out a Parisian’s idea of Tex-Mex and were even more entertained when we got closer and realized that the name of the restaurant was the “Indiana Cafe”. Indiana Tex-Mex? The menu did have a surprising variety of traditional Tex-Mex specialties. While we waited for our chimichangas and enchiladas we created the story of the owner in our minds. Larry and I both imagine that (s)he either went to college or did an exchange year at Purdue, and there was some Tex-Mex restaurant nearby (Chevy’s?) that (s)he loved so much, (s)he decided to bring it back to Paris and open his/her own place.

We are off in the morning to Normandy. This weekend is the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings and we would like to be there to pay tribute to the thousands of Americans, British, Canadians, and others who paid the ultimate price and are still there, never to return home.