Story:
M ISMAIL
Photos:
SHERONE TAN
* This travel feature is a two-parter. We will carry the second part tomorrow.
IT was way past midnight on Feb 1 and my friend, Sherone Tan and I were still chatting on Facebook. We have not been online with each other for some time due to her work. We managed to catch up that morning and the brief "hi" only ended almost two hours later.
“I’m feeling so sleepy already,” she said, speaking from her hotel room in Hong Kong before she flies back to the States the next day.
And yet she didn’t go offline and continued chatting instead.
As we chatted about her work in the fashion industry and living in a country thousands of miles away from home and her family, I looked through the images in her FB albums.
There were several, each detailing her life in the States and the places she’s been to. I stopped at her Musee du Louvre album and was captivated with France's
Musée du Louvre.
We exchanged questions and answers and I was captivated by her story.
The Louvre is one of the world's largest museums. When it was first opened in 1793, it only has 537 paintings. Today, its collection has reached almost 35,000 items. That's massive.
“I went there last summer for my birthday,” she said of her 8-day trip to London and Paris.
“I wish I was there forever,” she added.
I asked her why.
“I love Versaille,” she answered.
Yes, I do too. It is a beautiful place; so vast and full of grandeur.
“It’s like a dream come true to see where Marie Antoinette used to live,” she said.
“Marie Antoinette is my favourite French Queen,” my friend added. “She’s to die for.”
Oh no, don’t wish that, I thought.
I smiled alone from my end. I remember a lot of the things I read about the French Queen, an Austrian by birth and married to King Louis XVI, and liking her is the last thing in my mind. Extravagant to the point of madness, that’s how I see the historically famous Queen whose hair turned white from fear before her execution.
“Why Marie?” I asked puzzled.
“Because she has good fashion sense,” she added.
Well, sure enough. She had all the money that she just wouldn’t share with the people.
“But that costs her, her head,” my friend said and it was not even an afterthought.
Oh yes that part of Marie Antoinette’s history I thought was brilliant.
“And because of her behaviour,” my friend added, “inconspicuous consumptions were invented in history.”
My friend read French History in fashion school and so she loves the very topic. Her first visit to Paris was 15 years ago but she never had the chance to visit Versailles then.
I asked my friend to write about her experience while there, soaking in Versailles and French history and that "ugly" French Queen Marie Antoinette. Sherone said it is an honour to be asked to chip in for NewsFlashMedia but she can neither afford the time nor know where to begin.
“But I can tell you how I felt when I saw the famous Mona Lisa for the first time,” she said.
The painting of the Mona Lisa is placed in a special $7.5 million dollar room, the Salle de Etats at the Louvre.
“There was so much excitement being there. People were pushing to get to the front and I was just speechless.
“I was thinking I came all the way here to be pushed around for THIS?”
Still, she took loads of photos, almost three dozen shots of the Mona Lisa but she said none of the photos came out right. Most of them are blurred.
“I felt so very excited just being there, right in front of the Mona Lisa.
“But I don’t see the beauty. But I remember my very first thought of the painting. I was surprised at how much smaller the painting was from what I imagined it to be. I don't know what's the size though.”
Just for Sherone I Googled and found out the Mona Lisa measures 77cm x 53cm.
“I stood in front of Mona Lisa for a full 10 minutes and I tried starring at her eyes but the guard kept shooing me away,” she added.
“You were lucky to have that 10 minutes,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Every one have to just pass through and are not allowed to stop because there are millions of visitors daily to see the Mona Lisa,” she added.
Lucky you, I thought again.
“Will send photos of Mona Lisa to you when I’m back in San Francisco, maybe after the weekend,” she added.
I said okay and then said goodnight before rushing to the kitchen to have an extremely late dinner. The next day I downloaded some of Sherone's photos at the Louvre, which she agreed to share with our readers.
Maybe I will dream of Mona Lisa, the Versailles and recall how lovely the gardens were in Spring when I visited.
