Collected Item: “Traveling Behind the Mask: Post-COVID Trip to the Louvre”
Give your story a title.
Traveling Behind the Mask: Post-COVID Trip to the Louvre
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Photographs
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I found myself working from home for over a year. Our area and friends were extremely cautious about public health (Southern California), so we didn't explore international travel until after we were fully vaccinated in summer of 2021. In the fall of that year, we visited Paris for the first time and went to the Louvre.
During the 1+ year on self-imposed house arrest, I needed something to keep my mind busy. I took a number of online classes about Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia, historical subjects that I've always returned to whenever I had time in life. But given the frankly unimaginable amount of free time I had in 2020, I delved in further than ever, and even managed to teach myself hieroglyphics.
By the time we could travel, a first visit to the Louvre seemed like the ideal place to experience some of this new knowledge first-hand. In these photos, I'm in front of the Law Code of Hammurabi and a bust of Akhenaten, one of Egypt's more fascinating pharoahs. We had to show proof of vaccination to travel as well as enter the museum, and masks were required at all times.
One of my favorite things about these photos is someone trying to express a lifetime's worth of excitement using one's eyes only. I look insane. But the experience truly was important to me and now serves as a snapshot of post-pandemic travel and life.
During the 1+ year on self-imposed house arrest, I needed something to keep my mind busy. I took a number of online classes about Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia, historical subjects that I've always returned to whenever I had time in life. But given the frankly unimaginable amount of free time I had in 2020, I delved in further than ever, and even managed to teach myself hieroglyphics.
By the time we could travel, a first visit to the Louvre seemed like the ideal place to experience some of this new knowledge first-hand. In these photos, I'm in front of the Law Code of Hammurabi and a bust of Akhenaten, one of Egypt's more fascinating pharoahs. We had to show proof of vaccination to travel as well as enter the museum, and masks were required at all times.
One of my favorite things about these photos is someone trying to express a lifetime's worth of excitement using one's eyes only. I look insane. But the experience truly was important to me and now serves as a snapshot of post-pandemic travel and life.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
Arizona_State_University, HST-643, Spring_A_Session_2025, History_of_Tourism, Louvre, Paris, France, Akhenaten
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
self
Give this story a date.
2021-10-30