Opera: 1, Louvre: 0

Paris is not like Hawaii. You don't relax here; you look at things. We did the obligatory Louvre day yesterday and today got a wonderful guided tour of the Opera from C, the professor for whom I played computer tech all term.

That's the big Xmas tree at the Galeries Lafayette, the huge-ass super-ritzy department store just on the other side of the Opera. We went up to the roof to check out the view.

That's the original Swan Lake tutu...or actually, one of the original tutus, since the dancer who toured the world doing Swan Lake burned through quite a few of them in the process.

That's the ceiling of the Opera. It's the 1964 replacement for the original, which is still intact underneath.

This is how B feels about the Louvre.

This naked three-thousand year-old Egyptian chick is holding on to a large beach ball.

It is really quite remarkable just how much shit the French stole from Egypt in the nineteenth century.

Our conclusion? That the Louvre is actually kind of tedious. I think we already knew that, but both of us noticed that our moods improved considerably on being able to check it off the "have to do in Paris" list.* And, while I have no particular connection to or relationship with opera music itself, the Parisian Opera (the old one, not the crazy space-age one at the Bastille) is absolutely gorgeous inside. We were really lucky to have C as our guide, as she did her dissertation research on the Opera and knows more about that place than the people who work there, I'm sure.

As ever, buttloads of pics on Flickr.

* I still like the Egyptian stuff.