The Louvre and the Mona Lisa (Who Was Kinda Underwhelming)

Ah, the Louvre. The place you go to feel cultured, stare at some art, and pretend you know the difference between Renaissance and Baroque like a true intellectual

So there we were, A and I, standing in a line that felt longer than the queue for Space Mountain at Disney World, surrounded by French people (who were definitely judging us), and naturally, the only thing to do was have some banter. You know, making fun of French accents, discussing why every French dude looks like they’ve just rolled out of bed and accidentally became a model, and speculating on whether the Mona Lisa was just going to be a selfie of Leonardo da Vinci with a Snapchat filter

Now, I’ve been to Paris before, but I never actually ventured into the Louvre. I thought it was just a big ass glass pyramid with, like, art inside or whatever. Spoiler alert: it’s absolute chock massive. Like, not just “oh it’s a big museum” massive, but you could fit several football stadiums underneath kind of massive. And I had no idea about all the history buried under that pyramid, like the Mona Lisa and all those old Renaissance masterpieces. It’s mental! There’s this whole secret world under there where people obsess over paintings like it’s the original Insta

Random funny facts from the trip:

1. Ahem, The Mona Lisa is surprisingly small. It’s like everyone hypes her up, but then you see her, and you’re like, “Wait, that’s it? Did someone hit ‘print’ on the wrong size?”
2. A joked that we should have worn Just Stop Oil t-shirts, just to spice up the whole ‘waiting-in-line’ experience. You know, because who doesn’t want to bring a little climate protest energy to the world’s most famous art gallery?
3. There are cats in some of the paintings. Renaissance cats! They’re just chilling there, proving that even in the 1500s, cats didn’t care about your art.
4. Fun fact: the Louvre used to be a fortress before it became an art museum. It’s like the French couldn’t decide whether they wanted to defend it or decorate it.
5. Every time I saw an angel or a cherub in a painting, I wondered if they were secretly judging us from the canvas, like, “Ugh, mortals.”

By the end of it, we/I was both completely overwhelmed by the amount of art. I mean, you can only see so many naked cherubs and paintings of sad boy Jesus before your brain starts to blur them together. But despite the sheer mental overload, it was one of the best experiences of the trip. I left with a new appreciation for art, history, and how to subtly sneak in a few eye rolls when surrounded by French aristocrats pretending not to understand English.