"Keep good company - that is, go to the Louvre"

FINALLY. On Wednesday, August 28, we took a group visit to the Louvre. We had a 3-hour guided tour (yuck) which took us around to see some of the most famous pieces and parts of the museum: La Joconde (the Mona Lisa), the Rubens painting series of Queen Marie de Medici, La Grande Odalisque, the Galerie d'Apollon (an art gallery holding the crown jewels of France in a room gilded completely in gold and beautiful paintings), La Victoire de Samothrace (Winged Victory), and much more. It was incredibly frustrating because it was literally a jog through the Louvre. We had to speed-walk, almost jog to keep up with our tour guide. I got really pissed because we kept passing by rooms and rooms full of beautiful pieces without a second to see them. However, I guess it was a good way to take a look at some of the really famous pieces of the museum that everyone is supposed to see even if the pieces don't actually interest us.
Even though my feet hurt a lot at the end just from being on them for 3 hours straight, I decided that since I was in the mood for art, I would stay longer. So, from 6:00pm to a little after 8:00pm, I spent some time by myself in the Louvre and looked around at the things that I wanted to see. I think I may have been overly ambitious as I went straight into the 2 hours, totalling to 5 hours of non-stop Louvre-walking but it was definitely worth it. The painting of the partially-nude man seated with the woman at his feet is called Daphnis et Chloe...I just found it very romantic and loved it. Now, there is one statue that I must show you. In high school, I took AP Art History and fell in love with an Italian sculpture called the Barberini Fawn.
While I was walking around the Louvre, I saw the head/back of a statue that looked eerily similar to it so I FREAKED out and thought it was it. I literally started getting nervous and my pulse started racing when I was slowly walking up to it (weird, I know). But then I thought that it looked smaller than I thought it would be, and surely enough, it was a copy of it done by a French sculptor and the sculpture is called La Faune endormi. Still beautiful, though. Seriously. Hottest man ever is a fictional character made immortal in marble.
Here are some more beautiful pieces that I liked in the Louvre. The statue of the 3 beautiful nude women is called "Les Trois Graces" and was carved by a Frenchman named Pradier. The painting of the nude woman seated on her bed is called "La Baigneuse" (the Bather) by Ingres. The picture of the beautifully decorated roof is of the Galerie d'Apollon, or the Apollo gallery.

Overall, the two-hour period during which I wandered around the Louvre by myself were lovely and I think I'm going to go back tomorrow night.

P.S. The quote in the title was said by the painter Paul Cezanne.