In France in 1984

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;D I loved France and looked up to the french as a template of how americans should become and and live. I went to Louve as I stated. It was magnificent. There were more famous paintings, sculptures and historical artifacts I ever saw there. I had learned a lot about the Louve before I got there. It exceeded my expectations more than I could ever imagined. I no idea how big the Louve was and how many buildings it took up. I spent about eight hours there day and didn't get to see at least half of the museum. Most of the works of art I studied in textbooks in the colleges I went to were there. The gardens in the Louve were so incredibly beautiful too I couldn't believe I was actually in Paris and in the best and most famous museum in the world that I was taught. If I'm not wrong the Louve was also at the time one of the seven man=made wonders of the world. I saw works of art from thousands of years back in history to the present time. Another unforgettable part that caught my eye, in addition, was how works of art had evolved and grown into more meaningful objects that portrayed and told the stories of what the artists were conveying through their work and what was going on in so many parts of the world through the the artists' viewpoint and the way the artists decided to make it. I loved the Renaissance and Reformation artwork, it was so lovely, movingly touching and so indescribably important to see what was going on during a time of great peace, understanding/misunderstanding of one another and growth/evolution of people to modernize. That was my opinion of these countries' artwork reflected to me that were on display during those time frames of the Renaissance and Reformation. I also loved the era that happened about two hundred years or more after the Reformation. Impressionism, especially, french impressionism, was unbelievably more beautiful to me any artwork I had seen before and have ever seen since. French Impressionism became, at that moment, when I was in the Jeu De Pau (a building in the Louve that only Impressionism pieces of art) my favorite genre of artwork of all. I will never forget sitting outside in one of the many gardens all around the museum and stumbled upon Rodin's sculpture of The Thinker. I sat on one of the benches in front of The Thinker and marveled at it thinking myself what Rodin's The Thinker was thinking about totally mesmerized I didn't want to leave from it and spent at least an half an hour looking at it before I had to go see more of the museum. Our tour took us to Versailles, France next. Versailles, we learned was just one of the many beautiful palaces in France. It was built around six hundred years or more if memory serves me accurately. We arrived in Versailles and were taken on a guided tour of the history, significance and description of the things in it and outside it. There were tapestries that were almost blinding in that they were so magical and the furnishings in the Palace at Versailles were handmade with expert workmanship and had survived for so many years looking almost as though they were just made. The Palace was for the royal family in Versailles up until, I was taught the early eighteen hundreds. Versailles tie in to the United States, other than the many american artist's piece of artwork were there and in the Louve, was that the Palace was the place the Allies and Axis Powers signed the peace treaty to end WWII. I went outside into the gardens at the Palace of Versailles and couldn't believe my eyes. I had never seen gardens like that before even at the Louve. These gardens were opulent and works of nature that were there blew my mind. I walked around and almost had visions of what it was like for the royal family and their guests at the Palace to stroll through those gardens. We left France and headed by bus to Belgium, which spoke french as their major language and even had the same currency as France, the franc. The difference, our tour guide taught us, was the french used the french franc and the flemish used the Belgium franc. We arrived in Brussels the same day because that country was close to England and France and we would learn that all the countries we visited on our trip were closer to each ever than we were taught and, in area, the whole continent of Europe was smaller in size than our own country.