Paris, Day Five

Well, I'm actually in Amsterdam but I'm going to pretend I'm in Paris as I was too tired last night to organize any pictures or type anything. As I sit here in the hallway, I am surrounded by a school group of kids, about 14, none of whom seem to have any parents/guardians/manners.
So yesterday.
We started out going to the Paris Opera House:

where the Phantom of the Opera lives. Apparently he's not as big in France as he is everywhere else but someone recommended I go and I'm glad I did, it was the nicest building I've ever been in. Here's the opening hallway:

and a small shot of the interior:

It was cool, all the red divisions are separate boxes lined in red velvet. You walk in, hang your coat on the hook and you have your own private box.
This is the great hall:

Amazing place. Stunning.
I'm listening to Madonna right now, I was really stunned by the divorce news and wanted to read more but good luck. The internet here is 1 Euro for 20 minutes. I bought a British newspaper at the airport, The Sun, with the headline "Ritchie's bitchy (after seven-year itchy)" but it didn't say much. That woman needs to write a book. I brought her brother's book with my, so far I think I've read 20 pages.
Anyway, then we went to the Centre Pompideau, the modern art centre. I wanted to go there first because after the Musee D'Orsay I didn't want to be stuck in another boring museum all day at the Louvre. There was a great view from the top of the building:

And most of the art was crap, but they had a few things that really caught my attention. I thought this was really colourful:

and I love this statue, I took about 20 pictures of it.

Then we found this cool men's store with a bunch of designer stuff in it right by the gay district, about 5 floors, and we spent about an hour browsing in there. The prices were outrageous so we didn't buy anything.
Then we had dinner, I'm back on the vegetarian kick. I ate ham and felt very bad after for the pig. I love pigs. Luckily Amsterdam has a lot of vegetarian options.
So we got to the Louvre at about 7 and it closed at 10. They had intense security to get in and I wanted to have a cigarette before we went though security and my dad came up 2 flights of stairs with me and waited, without complaining. I was very impressed. I think I would have complained.
So we finally got in the Louvre. It's huge:

It's all the buildings you can see in the photo above and more.
The first thing we had to see was the Mona Lisa:

Everyone on the travel message board was saying how small it is, I didn't think it was that small.
They also had the Venus de Milo:

And they had I think the gayest statue I've ever seen:

and actually a lot of cool statues. I skipped through a lot of the rooms, like they had about 15 rooms with giant pots in them. How much pot do you need? All the religious art I skipped. They had a lot of statues, including this French layout:

It was funny, my dad wanted to see the British paintings room, it had about 7 of them. Very small. An afterthought.
When we were leaving I stopped and bought a guide book to the collection and I noticed they had a very famous gay painting of a man bathing that I hadn't seen. So we had to walk up 3 flights of stairs and to the other end of the building and ask at information and still my dad didn't complain! Wow!

It was a very cool painting.
We got home about 10, I got to talk to my mom for 12 minutes and we packed. On to part 2.