I received a cool magazine from a friend which had historical Fond Flashbacks. I couldn't believe this one about Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa.

If you flipped through The Washington Post on Jan. 16, 1963, you would have come to a display ad on Page B2. “Your home and health are as priceless as the Mona Lisa,” read the ad’s headline. “Both need protection from the ravages of wintertime dryness.” Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was being used to sell humidifiers.

The Mona Lisa was all the rage that winter in Washington for a simple reason: She was in Washington, the result of an artistic and diplomatic coup by first lady Jackie Kennedy with an assist from a Washington Post reporter (long story).

The Mona Lisa was on display from Jan. 9 to Feb. 3, 1963, at the National Gallery and then for a month at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the end, nearly 2 million people saw HER during HER brief time in the United States. Wow.

Steve and I will be finding ourselves in the Louvre one day. The world’s most visited museum attracts 10.2 million people a year with about 80%, it's believed, coming just to see the Mona Lisa. At times, officials have had to restrict access because of the chaos caused by the queues. One visitor wrote, "To see it (for 30 seconds), you have to stand in the line for one-two hours.” Needless-to-say, if this is the case, I will not be seeing the Mona Lisa on this trip.

Author Janice Macleod expressed how I feel about this city, “Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.”