Hi Everyone,
I had a very interesting conversation with a fellow Hive user the other day and the topic came around travel guides when we visit a new place. It has got me thinking, does people actually buy these guides when they visit a museum, palace or art gallery? Personally I don’t as I am not an arty person and the other reason is, these guides and books are normally pretty heavy to bring home where sometimes luggage weight and space is a premium. My hubby on the other hand love to buy these things when we visit museums and he would assure me I don’t need to carry them during our travels. So I thought I’ll go through the many books we have and share them here with my experiences with some of the places we have visited. The first one I am going to share is the very first time we visited The Louvre. I still remember it was super cold when we were in France and to have to line up to go in was very memorable.
Why I want to share this guide is because of this very guide, we visited The Louvre twice during our short stay in Paris. For my first visit in Paris, I wasn’t expecting to visit the same museum twice as time was very valuable but it had to be done because of the guide he bought. If you have been to The Louvre, it has loads to see and if you take your time, you probably won’t be able to finish the whole place in a day. The guide was very helpful to let us see what we want and give some explanation on some of the more important and popular exhibitions. It was very useful in my opinion also as it does get crowded depending on the time of week or time you go so having that guide helps us find the pieces we want to see. Like seeing the most famous painting Mona Lisa is a must, no matter what time or day, the crowds are there.
The reason we went there twice was the first day we just walked around and followed a path and gone through with reading the guide as we go. But when we got back to the Airbnb, we have realised that we have missed so many fabulous pieces from the book and hubby wants to go back again to see them. We did travel from the other side of the world to be there so there is no reason why we should miss it if we are in that city. If it wasn’t for the guide, we probably won’t be back to see some more famous pieces there and missed out on some great photo opportunities. The guide we got was not cheap, it was 17 euros back in the days and when we just finished uni, it was a big investment. I just also noticed that the edition of the book was published many years before we actually visited so I would presume that these don’t get updated that often if the displayed pieces are a permanent feature. Do you like buying the guides and books to read while you are there and take home like us?
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