The City of Louvre

If you ask the average person to name something famous in Paris? Well, they're going to say the Eiffel Tower, of course. But if this were a Family Feud question, you could expect to see the Louvre up on the big answer board. We weren't going to miss it.

Of course, the Louvre itself -- the palace that once served as the primary residence for French kings -- is an impressive building expanded over centuries. Its far more recent renovation, the glass pyramids designed in the 1980s by I. M. Pei, are even more iconic. It all makes for some nice photos as you make your way to the line to enter (at the sign for your assigned time).

What you can find in the Louvre could be its own "Family Feud style" question -- except that you'd probably only get one or two answers from those "100 people surveyed": the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Assuming you knew both of those famous pieces were at the Louvre, you'd probably expect that it's primarily an art museum. That's not quite the case.

The Louvre certainly does have its share of paintings, sculptures, and sketches -- and given its sheer size, it may well have more of those than any museum near you. But the vast majority of the museum's collection is archaeological finds and object d'art. On the whole, the place feels much more akin to the British Museum than I was expecting. Yes, the furnished palace chamber rooms were ostentatious (like Versailles the day before)...

And yes, the extensive Egyptian collection was impressive...

But overall, we thought we'd be seeing more "art" at the Louvre. Of course, we caught the two "headliners":

...but even our efforts to dig a bit deeper than that were thwarted. We were aware that the painting behind a popular internet meme, Self-Portrait in the Guise of a Mocker by Joseph Ducreux (seen here), was in the Louvre collection. We even looked up its specific room number online... only to learn that that area (and half the floor around it) was closed for remodeling. So no pictures of us next to the painting, copying the strange pose.

While we'd deliberately gone to the Louvre on a day it's open late, we didn't wind up taking advantage of those extra hours. Instead, we opted for a leisurely dinner. We'd been having a lot of French food, and decided to mix it up with an Italian restaurant. (It felt like we'd chosen a good one when a vacationing family from Italy sat down at the table next to us.) And for an after dinner drink? We skipped the more expected French beverages in favor of French whiskey, Bellevoye, that turned out to be quite delicious. (Here's hoping we can find a bottle in the States some day.)

We ended our night a bit early, but that worked well for our plans the next day: we were renting a car to leave Paris and explore other parts of the country.