The Mona Lisa

You've heard of the Leonardo De Vinci, right?
Right, okay, and you've heard of his famous painting, The Mona Lisa, right?
Yea, it's supposed to be an amazing work of art....

For me when I think of an amazing work of art, I think amazing work of art, right? You know -- big, bright, amazing detail, captivating...etc etc.

Okay, I would like to meet the nut who said that The Mona Lisa qualified to be an amazing work of art. Besides the fact that De Vinci painted her, she really doesn't qualify, in my opinion...except for maybe (just maybe) detail-wise. I'm betting that this nut had a little to much good French wine before he looked at this painting...because it was only afterwards that he insisted that the Mona Lisa stares right at you, no matter where you are standing (including behind it...).

So my experience with the Mona Lisa is well, a typical experience with this painting...basically disappointing.
Anyways, I was in the Louvre with my Dad and my grandparents. Really, the only reason we went was to see the Mona Lisa, Venus of Milo (the most famous of the millions of naked women statues...) and just to say we went. We followed the signs to the Mona Lisa...and got distracted by everything else on the way.
When we got to the huge room (and surprisingly the most crowded...) that she is supposed to be in, we walk in and walk around in circles looking for it...I was looking for some gigantic woman that took up a whole wall. Then we saw her.

A whole wall is dedicated to her. Ironically, she is maybe twice the size of my 14" screen TV (yea I know I am behind the times...it's more like 16" now.) And of course there was a mass (mass = several hundred) of people in front of her and so the size we saw was more like the window on my microwave...which is small by the way.

Now my Grandmother, Grammy, like any good tourist wanted pictures of the painting. I don't blame her either, if you are there you had better take pictures because the likely hood of wanting to come back is slim when you stand in line to see paintings all day...

Being the good grandson that I am, I volunteered to barge through the mass and grab some photos. So I plunged into the mass...hoping that it would open like the Red Sea, but not really believing that it would either...
And was confronted by the notorious B.O. of the French. Never in my life have I been squeezed between so many stinky people at one time. Thankfully it only lasted for about 5 minutes before I popped out on the other side. As soon as I did, I whipped out my camera and started snapping (snap it out). So the Mona Lisa is small enough when you are standing right in front of it, but they make you stand about 10 feet away from it, defeating the purpose of barging to the front of the line.
Nevertheless, I got about 4 pictures of her when I heard a security officer (there were 3 by the way...) start barking at somebody behind me to snap one shot and then move on. So I snapped 2 more (making it 6 photos in all) and then moved on.
As I was moving on, I heard another security officer tell someone else that they couldn't film the Mona Lisa. Immediately I thought, "why?!?!?".....then again why would you film her? It's not like you are gonna catch her eyes moving on film, she wouldn't be that obvious...

And so my Mona Lisa experience ended with those thoughts on my mind....