The Louvre

Our last stop of the day was the Louvre! I was SO excited because Trek agreed to stay with the kids so I could take Opa inside & be his tour guide. I couldn't wait to show him the Venus DeMilo, Madonna on the Rocks, & the Mona Lisa. I couldn't wait to come off the subway & walk straight into the inverted glass pyramid at the entrance to the museum. But as we came out of the subway, we found ourselves above ground (not below like we had previously done) looking at the Louvre from the outside walls. We wandered around wondering why we had come out where we had & we remembered that the last time we were here, they were doing massive construction at the subway stops. After trying to figure out how to get down we realized that they had redone everything so you couldn't get down to the inverted pyramid until you were entering the entrance of the museum. No problem right? We'll just see it as we go in. As we walked through the side wall & entered the courtyard with the upright glass pyramid, I noticed a line of people going down an escalator that I had never noticed before. We got to the big glass pyramid & took a few pics & let the girls play in the water a little bit. Trek & I decided on meeting points in a little over an hour. Then Dad & I took off for art adventure!! I wanted to take him down the glass elevator in the pyramid to go down to get the tickets & go in, but there was a HUGE line waiting for the elevator. We wanted to avoid that so we went back the way we came in to go down that escalator we saw coming in. We got in the line & stood in it for about 15 minutes when a man approached us & asked to see our tickets. Oops! Wrong line I guess. Everything was so strange to me. Both times we went before, we came off the subway straight into the Louvre entrance underground, got tickets in 2 minutes flat, & walked right in. This was so weird. We asked the man where we get tickets & he told us the line was by the big pyramid. Ugh. We saw that line! Now we had wasted 15 minutes of our Louvre time to find out that was the line we should have been in. So we went back to the courtyard & went to the front of the glass pyramid to get in line . . . but we couldn't find where the line ended. We started walking around the line so we could find the end. 10 minutes later, we were still walking around the perimeter of the Louvre trying to find the end. This line wrapped around the ENTIRE MUSEUM!!

(Here's a pic of Opa [hands outstretched] showing just one piece of the line to get to the ticket line. It was incredible how busy it was!)

We found an information guy & dad asked him how long this would take. The guy told us "1 hour & 30 minutes . . . maybe 2 hours." We sighed. Then dad asked "To get into the museum?" "No, no! To get to the line to the ticket counter. The line to get tickets is about 45 minutes." So it was going to take us 3 hours just to get in. Then there's a line for Venus DeMilo & a HUGE line for Mona Lisa. There was no way we could leave Trek there alone with all 4 kids for at least 4 hours. It would just be miserable for him & I love him too much to do that to him. I was devastated. Dad didn't seem to care at all. He obviously isn't a "line" person. I was SO sad he didn't get to go inside, but he was happy to go touch the glass pyramid. So I'm glad he was happy with everything. I love the Louvre! Just being in the courtyard is fun. The girls love it & so do Trek & I. It's just beautiful.

After the Louvre, we piled back into the subway & said farewell for the very last time to Paris, France!! sniff sniff. We will miss it for sure.

We rode the subway back to Disneyland & got back right around 5:00 pm. We had made great time the entire day & didn't get a drop of rain. We ran back to the Christmas Market & bought some more chocolate slabs & a brat & potatoes for dad (which I ended up eating most of. . . man they were SO good!). Then Trek took me back to the Disney store & bought me 10 Mickey Mouse glasses for the house. We've been without drinking glasses for quite some time now & it's time to get some new ones & now I have 10 adorable Mickey Mouse glasses that I love! What a sweet hubby I have. I love him so much. As we were buying the Mickey glasses, Lorien comes running in doing the "potty dance" & Trek grabbed her & took off running. When I got outside with my new glasses all wrapped up, Lorien was crying hysterically & Trek looked at me & shook his head. The poor baby didn't make it & peed her pants. Poor thing. We took her to the van & I got some extra clothes out & changed her into them. Then we piled back in the Pottermobile & drove the 4 hours home. As soon as we got on the Autobahn it started pouring cats & dogs! We were SO lucky to have not had a drop of rain the entire day we were in Paris. We got home around 9:30 that night & went to bed. What a perfect 2 days if I do say so myself!