/tacanderson

Amazing.

It is most famous for Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Which is apparently the most famous painting in the World. That's probably true. It's on almost every piece of museum merchandise at the Louvre. The picture is the room the painting is in. It's the sole subject on the wall behind the crush of people.

Do you know how long people spend looking at Lisa? 15 seconds. Unless you're an art buff there isn't much to appreciate about the painting. IMO it's not one of Leonardo's greatest paintings. And I definitely don't think it's the bet painting in the Louvre. But it is the most famous.

The hall outside this one was filled with more great Italian artists that you are likely to ever see in one place and few people stopped to look at the Rembrandt's or Caravaggio's any of the other works for the 16th and 17th centuries. Most rushed to the Lisa, fought through the crowd, snapped their picture and kept moving.

I've never understood fame and popularity. Why do some artists, musicians and authors make such a big splash? And why are the most popular rarely the best?

Popularity doesn't seem all that great to me.

I grew up playing soccer and even played in high school. The problem was that my university didn't have a soccer team back then. Of course they didn't (and I think still don't) have a rugby team either. But there was a club team that university students played on.

I thought it sounded like fun so I went out to practice. They put me in the wing position. When the ball pops out of the scrum the line starts running and they start passing the ball back along the line. With each pass the line accelerates until it gets to the wing (that was me).

So by the time it got to me I was at a full sprint, that is until I ran into one of the other players who was built like brick wall. I then had to drop the ball while the two teams tried to grind me into the ground trying to get the ball. Once I escaped I had to run back to my position which was about the time the ball popped out again and we repeated the whole thing all over again.

I didn't mind the hitting and tackling. The running was killer. I have never run so much playing any sport before. It's impressive how much those guys run. I realized rugby wasn't for me and instead decide to focus on school. (Yeah right.)

Last time, I didn't get many pictures or get to do much exploring so I promise to do a lot more of that this time.

I took this picture on the tube last night after we got back from Edinburgh Scotland.

1- This is probably one of the most beautiful cities in the World. Seriously, Old Town is amazing.

2- The most popular soft drink is not Coca Cola but a drink called Irn-Bru which is a radioactive orange color and is loaded with large amounts of sugar and caffeine and is typically used as a hangover drink. Which explains it's popularity in Scotland. It also has a hard to identify flavor. Some called it orange bubble gum, some called it cream soda on crack, others thought it had a toothpaste kind of flavor.

3- According to our tour guide (who had a masters in History but is still leading tours) Scotland is home to the most ghost sightings in all of Europe. This might have something to do with the before mentioned hangovers.

4- Haggis actually tastes really good. Despite being all the leftover, gross parts of a sheep, boiled in the stomach it tastes really good.

5- That the French and Scottish actually have something in common. They both hate the English. Apparently a large percentage of Scotland still resents being part of the United Kingdom and has a vote scheduled for 2015 on whether to abdicate from the UK. They have their own parliament (which has limited power), they print their own paper money (it's still Pounds but doesn't have the Queen on it) and Scotland and England are actually separated by a fault line and are slowly drifting away from each other (both physically and politically).