Trip Overseas Part 5: Headless Beauties

The bust of Louis XVII

Bust of Alexander The Great

Showing a man writing hieroglyphs 

The Louvre museum is home to many beautiful pieces of art like sculptures and paintings among others. What caught my immediate attention were these very beautiful headless statues. Although headless, these sculptures have great detail on their clothing which makes them seem very real. Each and every fold in the cloth is specifically shown; the textures are very well represented and have a very rough yet smooth feeling to them. Though these statues don’t have an apex they still manage to capture your view and make you want to look at them even more.

There were not only headless statues but bodiless busts like that of Alexander the Great.

Some of the sculptors whose work is present in the Louvre are – Michelangelo, Puget, and Houdon etc. Other statues: There were also other sculptures that caught the eye like that of a rider on a horse, of kings, of angels, of babies, of Gods and Goddesses… The famous Venus de Milo was the center of attraction; though the statue is armless is still holds great beauty and elegance. Aside from Roman and Greek sculptures there were a few Egyptian sculptures too - statues of cats, the priest of Bastet, the very famous Seated Scribe and the Sphinx.  

A Trip Overseas Part 4: A Peek into the Beginning of the Universe

CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an international organization in Geneva with the world's largest Particle Physics laboratory. It was established in 1954 and has 20 European member states. What really interested me at first about Cern was the experiment that is being carried out here, to discover more about the Big Bang theory and how our universe began. Its main project right now is the LHC or Large Hadron Collider, which is being used by scientists to help find out more about the Big Bang. Though you are not really able to see the inside of the lab, there are many exhibits that are open for public viewing.

Back to Geneva, the Jardin Botanique or Botanical Garden has a vast variety of plants from different parts of the globe, like flowers from the Andes and from the deserts of the world. There were different flora and fauna in the garden and the products that could be acquired from the plants were also mentioned. It had a very small but magnificent greenhouse which is home to many species of cacti.

In the next part, visit France and the Louvre with me.

A Trip Overseas Part 3: Power and Majesty

I have mentioned the United Nations building in my earlier post (Part 1), and I would like to describe it a bit more before I talk about the Alps. The UN building has great infrastructure and has a very large campus. There is a very beautiful fountain at the entrance and a chair with a broken leg sits near the fountain – it reminds one that a person cannot stay in power forever and that power corrupts.

It also has a very great shop which has almost everything – from wine to chocolates to stationery J.

Moving on to the Alps: The Alps mountain range runs through several countries in Europe, from Austria on the east to France in the west. The Chamonix-Mont Blanc Mountains are very close to the city of Geneva. Mount Blanc is 15,782 feet tall and it is the highest mountain in the Alps. To reach to the top of the mountains you have to take a ski lift and there are many towers that you can choose to climb to get a better view from the top. There is a magnificent bridge, on crossing which you reach Italy. Below the mountains is the city of Chamonix, which surprisingly hardly receives snow.