Paris, France Ah! Paris in the spring and we were there amid all the freshness and early blooming trees. Her landmarks are especially beautiful at this time of year, such as the Eiffel Tower (photo), Les Invalides (photo) (Napoleon’s final tomb, you may recall we visited his first resting place (see St. Helena), the Arc de Triomphe (photo), the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, the Seine (photo), the Lourve (photo) and Notre Dame (photo). Actually our purpose was to have an extended time at the Lourve, which on previous visits had been too brief because of time constraints. In the past, when we’ve arrived at the Louvre and the tour guide has announced, “See the Lourve, but be back on the bus in an hour!” This time we did it right. We booked a historic old French hotel within a block of the front door and could go back for naps whenever our sensibilities reached overload. We viewed all 12.5 Km of paintings and sculpture, including the suites of Napoleon III; some of it we did twice and some even thrice (photos). On previous occasions having seen what the Romonov’s gathered at St. Petersburg, as well as the fruits of British Colonialism displayed in London museums, and what has been collected by the Vatican, plus the pieces that somehow were left behind in Athens, Florence and Rome, and now having seen the Lourve, one can be mighty pleased with western man’s artistic expressions of the human condition. It is probably just as well that some of the heavier pieces remain in Russia, France and England, because if they were returned to their rightful origins, surely Greece and Italy would sink under the burden into the Mediterranean!

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