Refusing to queue for the Mona Lisa changed how I see travel.

I wandered the Louvre's lesser halls... and found more peace there.

3 comments

3 Comments

I got stuck in that Mona Lisa crowd once and felt like livestock. Which of the smaller halls ended up being your favorite? I remember the French Crown Jewels room being almost empty and kind of amazing. What do you think makes people skip over those spots for the one famous painting?

markhall1mo agoMost Upvoted

Notice how tour groups herd people straight to the Mona Lisa, @jordan_sullivan40. It creates a fear of missing out on the "must-see" item. That's why your Crown Jewels find felt like a secret victory.

kelly_schmidt1mo ago

Yeah, it's like Markhall said about the herd mentality, but worse because half the crowd is just taking a blurry phone pic to prove they were there. I spent twenty minutes actually looking at the French Crown Jewels from the 1700s without getting shoved, and that beats a distant glance at a tiny, behind-glass painting any day.