After I met my husband in spring of 2004, I spent quite some time in France the following summer. Arno lived close to Besançon at than time and once we decided to take a drive to Paris and spend a long weekend visiting museums (something one rarely does when one lives too close to tourist attractions...).
We slept in a not too expensive Ibis hotel at the edge of the city from where we could still catch a fast metro connection to the centre. The first day we decided to go to Louvre - a priceless, but very exhausting experience. Eight hours of wondering around the endless galleries, stretching over four levels, an ant hill of people - and we still managed to visit only half of the exhibitions...
The next day we decided to take it easy and went only to Georges Pompidou Centre - it started raining heavily soon after we entered and I could make some interesting pictures of empty outside staircases with Paris stretching below. The upstairs restaurant on the terrace, busy with lunch crowd, was quickly deserted after it was clear the rain wouldn't stop.
An all-day visit to a museum is a distant memory now, not only that we couldn't afford it with two small children with an attention span of 12 minutes but I'm not sure we still have the strenght for an eight-hour marathon...
