Tackling the Louvre

Today we're up bright and early in order to tackle the Louvre. "Tackle the Louvre?" Did I really say that? As if the Louvre was something to be conquered, attacked and vanquished? Well, in a way, it is.

Yesterday we went there and stood in a very long line. Turns out, it was the wrong line. This was the line for the people WITH tickets. The other line, the one we were supposed to be in, wound around the building--and by building I mean acres of palace, which it once was. The lovely woman in front of us caught us before we ducked out of line and recommended we go to the tourist bureau, down the street on Rue de Pyramides, where we could get tickets much more quickly. That we did, and tucked the tickets away for today.

That left us with time to continue our exploration of the City of Light. We'd been to Montmartre the day before, enjoying a picnic lunch at the fountain right below Sacre Coeur, the beautiful church that sits on the highest hill overlooking all of Paris. Yesterday's lunch was in the Tuileries following our aborted trip to the Louvre, and it occurred to me that there were people around us, locals, having their own lunch breaks from work. I wondered, do the Parisians ever tire of all this beauty? Would it ever be routine to be surrounded by plazas, monuments, ancient sculpture and priceless art? I doubt it.

Another destination for the day was Harry's New York Bar & Grill, known as a frequent hang-out of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the gang. The bar is also allegedly famous for 1) being the origin of the invention of the Bloody Mary by a bartender who was helping his patrons overcome their hangovers and 2) being the place where George Gershwin wrote the melody "An American in Paris." There was an article on the wall from the New York Post validating the origin of the Bloody Mary story but alas, the piano bar downstairs was closed so we couldn't confirm the story about Gershwin. We ordered Bloody Marys and toasted Gershwin anyway.

Earlier in the day on our way to the Tuileries for lunch we walked through the Place Vendome. This is a huge square that boasts high-end shops and the Ritz Carlton, known in the guidebooks as the former home of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the place where Coco Chanel died. It's also known as the place where Princess Diana was staying with boyfriend Dodi Fayed on that last fateful visit to Paris. I was still ruminating about the loss of Princess Diana when we immediately ran into Woody Allen, coming within two feet of him and his entourage. Mr. Allen looked like he was scoping out the plaza for a movie. His people hustled everyone across the street where I managed to take his photo, then had a sudden, stabbing thought... does that make me paparazzi?