We slept in today – until 11:30am!!! It was wonderful. I guess all that walking and sightseeing caught up to us both because we were dead to the world this morning. After getting ready we decided to walk first up to the catacombs. When we got there, a line going around the entire block had formed, and our trusty Museum pass did not give us queue jumping rights, so we opted to not see the catacombs today. Instead, we took the metro to the Dome Church and Rodin Museum. The Rodin Museum is just off the metro stop and directly across the street from the Dome Church, so we went there first. The museum was Rodin’s mansion and grounds and the museum is both inside the mansion, and outside around the grounds. This place was very cool and I like his sculptures a lot. Some of the famous ones you may know are The Thinker and The Kiss (both are shown below).
After exploring, we walked across to the Dome Church. This church was commissioned by Louis the XIV to be his burial place, but instead it is now Napoleon’s tomb. It is a lot like the Pantheon on the inside, kind of plain and empty, except for an enormous and rather boring looking red marble box that holds Napoleon and all his coffins (yes, he’s in a sort of Russian Nesting Doll coffin contraption… a small one fit inside a bigger one and so on until it becomes the enormous tomb you see in the church). The prettiest parts of this church were the yellow stained glass windows which highlighted a huge altar (see below).
Onward we went to the Museum d’Orsay. I liked this museum a lot and I liked it a lot more than I did the Louvre. It holds works from 1848-1914 from artists such as Monet, Van Gogh, Klimt, Rodin, Manet, Renior, etc. Very cool!!! We looked at every gallery and spent several hours here exploring. Again, my favorite pieces were the sculptures, although I must say it was really amazing to see some of the famous Monet and Van Gogh pieces in real life!!! And, another favorite part about Orsay is that it was not really all that crowded, not anything like the Louvre, and way less stinky (for some reason, the Louvre had a lot of stinky rooms, like gaggy, and it was really unpleasant because instead of being able to enjoy the gallery, you wanted to get out of there so fast to not throw up from the stench. Yuck. Maybe it was because it was so crowded and it was just the smell of large amounts of people crammed into small spaces???) Anyway, that was nice about Orsay, to not be crowded and not be stinky. So much fun!!!
At the end of the day we stopped at my favorite café and ate another Veggie Enchilada, it was delicious. My feet have more blisters today and I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll be able to walk without limping. Even though I have boxes of bandaids with me, being bandaged doesn't help with the tenderness of walking on open blisters, but I'm managing just fine. It's only at the end of the day that my feet really hurt the most. And, Stanley is feeling MUCH better today... no more cold, hooray!!! We have on the itinerary for tomorrow a visit to the Sacred Heart Cathedral, the Opera House, Picasso Museum and the Catacombs. The Catacombs open at 10:00am and they are literally one block from our hotel, so we’ll get there early to ensure we don’t have to wait in a long line, hopefully. The rest of the sites are on the other side of town in the Red Light Districts and the Opera Districts (both areas we have not yet had a chance to explore) so it should be a great day of exploring. ~Michele
Stanley here...
I am feeling MUCH better today! The Zyrtec, Vitamin C and my own homegrown remedy involving French liquid yogurt called "YOP" and a little bit of RHUM really pulled the trick. All better... Hazaah!
Michele always writes such a concise and fact-filled account of the day’s meanderings that I am left with little of value to pass along apart from my vapid commentaryifying pomposity ☺ Did I say ‘value’? Sorry, that is a gross overestimation. Still- read on.
Though not on any ‘must-do’ list for visiting Paris (unless you are an art-geek), the Musee Rodin is a work of art in and of itself. Obvious care has been taken to preserve the lovely grounds and the original ‘Hotel Biron’ residence. The pace and crowd-level of this museum is quite unlike the others we’ve visited. Perhaps the fact that there are no tour groups here and its bit off the beaten tourist path make such a breath of fresh air, a real artsy place. I felt quite the Philistine, as I was only familiar with The Thinker, The Kiss and The Bourgeoisie of Calais (Oh and I guess Balzac in monk’s robes). All the rest was a delightful surprise to add to my scant (but ready to really increase) knowledge of Art History. The clientele of this place were also decidedly up-market financially and/or culturally. The Louvre* (yee haw, gotta see that Moanin’ Lisa!) it is not. I highly recommend a visit to this one. Sculpture lover or no, you will be handsomely rewarded by the outcome Rodin’s gifted hands, mind and lifetime of dedication.
*The Louvre is a great museum, THE great museum and everybody knows it. It is massively thronged with people who seem to be merely checking their visit off on some god-awful 1000 Places to See Before You Die/Bucket List… Die already! Or better yet LIVE!!! Sheesh.
The Dome Church is in size and scale to Napoleon’s accomplishments and without understatement, his ego. The place was originally designed as a tomb-church for that other famous French egomaniac Louis XIV (Ha and you thought I was going to say Charles de Gaulle, gotcha!). I enjoyed the grandeur of the building and picked up a Napoleon mug for my classroom. Mmmm, coffee.
Finally, the Musee de Orsay is very like the Rodin Museum in feel, though much larger. It is a converted railroad station with some additions. The open-air main gallery and old railroad station clock are a perfect fit for the snapshot of time of the works housed here (1848-1914). Though there were some tour groups here, it didn’t have the rushed or crowded feeling of the Louvre. Also, and importantly, the tour groups were free-range and on their own not following some tour-guide person with a gaudy umbrella or flag monopolizing all the real estate in right front of various important works and blathering on an on in English, Mandarin or Spanish or whatever though headsets (or worse vocally and just really loud) to their charges about a load of pointless drivel you could just as soon get from reading the museum provided maps. Or better yet (as in the case of Orsay) a wireless handset you could rent in your language of choice and punch in a coded number when you were by a particular work of art, hear all about it and move on. I personally would love to see major historical and cultural sites around the world abolish tour guides (in the sites) and move to this system at the Orsay. Let the tour groups and guides in, by all means, but let them only congregate in open spaces, not, say, RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MOANIN’ LISA! Way to go Orsay and Rodin Museums!
Didn’t realize I was thinking all that. Sometime you have to write just to know what’s on your mind. ~SEA
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