Essentials

Two must-sees on the list of everyone who comes to Paris:

and

Both are things I don't see myself getting sick of anytime soon. Good food and wine is essential to getting you through either one of them, lest you end up in a bleary-eyed pushy monster haze.

There. Much better now.

La Dame de Fer never ceases to amaze. Pictures can't really do it justice. It's the highest-grossing tourist attraction in the world, and for good reason.

The Louvre can be be quite packed around a certain Italian master's painting, so if you go and just have to see her, go on Friday night when the museum is open until 10. You'll have her almost to yourself. The rest of the museum is wonderful and overwhelming, and not nearly as crowded as that one wing gets. While we were standing in the security line, a group of younger Brits in front of us saw the 10 euro price tag on the admission sign and started wondering out loud if it was worth the price before taking off to do something else. Their loss.

The Napoleon Apartments are fantastic on their own, but right now they are infiltrated with a really amazing modern sculpture exhibit by Wim Delvoy mixed in.

This twisted mass of cathedralness was titled "dump truck".

All the old bourgeois mixed with the quirky new art made me happy.

The rest of the museum is fantastic as well.

The detail, color and depth in a Vermeer is impossible to capture...

I love how in Picassa, this guy popped up as a face and it asked me to tag him.

Before Paris was invaded during WWII, every single piece of art in the Louvre was packed away by volunteers and hid in various safehouses throughout France. After the war, not a single thing went missing or damaged, including the enormous Winged Victory (she was already missing her tete to begin with).

You could probably spend a week wandering around the corridors and rooms here and not see everything. I generally prefer smaller and more focused museums, but this is probably the best 10 euros you could possibly spend to feast your eyes.