I got started early today so I went for the rest of the guided walk around my neighborhood, which started at the church that was basically right behind my hotel, called St. Germain Des Pres which is considered the oldest church in Paris. It had its start as a Roman temple, then an abbey that was on the outskirts of medieval Paris, and now the neighborhood is named for the church. From the outside it is not very pretty, but the inside had a really nice blue ceiling with high gothic arches. Outside, there are 2 famous cafes here that used to be famous for writers going there, but now I think they are just tourist spots with big outdoor seating.
My next stop was the St. Sulpice church where I had gone to on my first night’s dinner walk., but today I was able to go inside. This church is on a really grand square and the front of the church has these giant colonnades and then 2 towers on either side, but not in a gothic style like Notre Dame. Just inside the first chapel had some paintings by Delacroix which were really nice- I like seeing art in a location that it was meant to be like this. The altar area had a really strange but neat statue of Mary and Jesus on top of a 3 dimensional rock and Mary was tramping on a snake. In another chapel is a copy of the shroud of Turin- it looks way too creepy to be real.
And, finally, my last part of the walk was Luxembourg Gardens, I had wanted to go here for a few days but it was always left to the end of the day and I was tired. My friend told me he loved coming here and watching the real Parisians hang out. It is a giant garden surrounding an old palace, and nowadays underneath the garden is a hidden complex that has the French secret service. Turns out there is not much of a “garden” here, more of the French style of gardens which is mostly trees and hedges in very straight lines and gravel paths to walk through- some pavement. It was very nice and tranquil though and I did find kids on some sort of scavenger hunt, locals reading papers on benches, and very active tennis courts. I tried to find the “chess playing area” and boules court but was unsuccessful, but some areas were roped off and some new things were bing planted, so I think they were just getting spruced up. The main event is a large pond that is directly behind the old palace and there are lots of different areas and levels here to hang out and relax. Here I did see an amusing thing- 2 middled aged ladies pretend sword fighting- not fencing but with heavy looking swords, mostly just like a coordinated dance with them- and I imagine this is a good workout, maybe it will be the next big thing. I circled around the pond and found some actual flowers that were very pretty, and soon I was at the exit and ready to take my bus.
I had planned on going to the Orangerie Museum this morning and then going to the Louvre in the afternoon. On my way to the Orangerie I realized that the bus stop was actually at the Orsay Museum, so I figured I should actually start there.
The Orsay is my favorite museum in Paris. It is set in an old train station, so you walk in and the whole place is very open and on both ends there are giant clocks. The center is open to the ceiling and features some sculptures and then the art rooms are off to both sides, and the art here is mostly post-1500s good stuff, especially in the 1800s Impressionist French art that I love. I used my guidebook’s audioguide to point out the important stuff and I liked how they focused on the transition of art. So, one of the first rooms was showing the old classical style of art- showing Roman Goddesses nude and perfect, but then in the 1800s the artists bucked the system and started showing nudes more realistically and in modern settings- this was very controversial and while I like both styles, I can see the goods and bads of both. I think that the old nudes were pretty but they honestly look like 12 year old girls and we shouldn’t show this as the idealistic beauty as it is not possible for adult women to look like this. On the other hand the modern nudes would show things a little too graphically at times, not so pretty- or it would seem strange to have a nude woman sitting in a French park with modern dressed men. I’m not sure of the purpose, but on one side of the museum there was a model of Paris that they put under a glass floor and it was interesting to see the layout of the streets. They also had a model of the Opera House of Paris, a place I haven’t been to but it was really amazing to see it as a model and they had a cross section of it and it was amazing to see that the stage area was like twice as big as the seating area, a lot going on back there.
Upstairs in the Orsay was my place- the Impressionists- who starting with Monet started painting things not so exact, but with little dabs of paint that might not look like much close up- not the usual exact black outlined images- but from far away they colors blend together to make a gorgeous painting. Monet, Renoir with his gorgeous innocent looking girls, Pisarro, Cezanne, Degas and his ballet dancers. Oh such pretty stuff. One of the Monets had me captivated it was a simple forest scene but the path and trees looked so 3 dimensional that I wanted to touch the painting and feel the velvety look of the bushes. I also enjoyed seeing the little French town I had recently visited, L’etrat in some paintings- the town with the big cliffs and arch windows. At the end of this floor I was ready for a break and some lunch and there was a nice cafe there that was pretty busy but I was able to get in and have a delicious salad and a little iced coffee to give me a pick me up. My final stop was lower in the building where there were a few Van Goghs, but none were my favorite after seeing so many good ones in Amsterdam.
Now I was ready to see the Orangerie Museum which required crossing the river and then walking through the big Tuileries Garden which ended at a giant pond where tons of people were sitting and relaxing- the weather today was pretty cloudy but still nice and warm. The special thing about the Orangerie is they feature a few giant canvases of Monet- of his gardens and a pond with Lilly pads. Jeremy and I went to his house and gardens on the way to Normandy, and we loved it so much. It was really fascinating to see the place where these paintings came from. I must say that last time I was here, I didn’t like these water Lillies so much, he painted them as he was going blind and they are very abstract, I like his paintings that you can see the scene. But, this trip was different, I had seen the source since then, and I tried a new technique. You can sit in the middle of the room surrounded by the 4 paintings per room (and 2 rooms), but what I found is that if you start walking by the paintings, it feels like you are there at the pond. There were tons of people sitting in the middle looking bored and unimpressed and I was walking along the walls glancing around like you would if you are taking a walk in the woods, and I had a big grin on my face, people probably thought I was crazy. Overall, it is a great example of art being shown in a place that they were made for, and the light on them was so nice.
Downstairs in the Orangerie there is another collection of art that came from a couple of high class citizens from the 1800s. They were friends with a lot of the painters and were often gifted things, and bought more, and now the family has put the collection together in one place. I like this sort of collection because it makes you think that these paintings were chosen because one person liked them all, so it shows you a little about that person. There was also a special exhibit that really blew me away. It was 2 different painters that were actually friends, they were both German and you could see how their styles developed and were similar to each other for a while, but in the end both were killed in WW1 in their young years. Their names were Macke and Marc and it was funny how at first I clearly liked one over the other, but then Marc came out in the end a colorful gorgeous painter that I was amazed that I had never noticed before.
I was on a roll with having a good time in museums and tonight the Louvre was open late, and on my way home anyway, so I decided to go for it. It was a 20 minute walk back through the Tuileries Garden to get there, but it was very busy and energetic, so pretty and fun to walk through. On the other end of the garden there was another giant pond with chairs full of people sitting- it is Friday night- and then some flowery section before reaching the big courtyard where the giant glass pyramids of the entrance of the Louvre. It was a bit of a circus there with people taking pictures and getting excited. Once I entered I did have to spend a little bit of time charging my phone while eating a sandwich. I used my audioguide tour for the Louvre to give me an overview of this massive museum. I think this is what Jermey and I did last time because otherwise it is so easy to get lost or not no what to really focus on. The problem was that still following this route it made me struggle to find out where to go, and while there are elevators in the museum, this was an old palace so there are so many little in between levels and hallways that it was hard to always find an elevator going where I wanted to go, so it was pretty tiring. I saw the big things in the ancient world- the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and walked through hallways of Greek and Roman statues. I headed to the main paining gallery which was a little uncoordinated as one whole section of the museum was closed today. This gallery was mostly old stuff- 1400-1600s but a lot of gems. The Louvre has the most Da Vinci’s then any other museum in the world, but it is a total of 5, but they are the jewels of the museum, including the famous Mona Lisa which gets its own room with a giant crowd around her. When I went in, the crowd wasn’t as bad as when I was there last time, and honestly I liked the Mona Lisa a lot better this time, she seemed bigger, smilier, and brighter than before. Maybe she was renovated since I saw her, or as my guidebook suggested, she is what you are feeling, so if you are happy then you will see that she looks happy. I backtracked the painting gallery which they say is the length of 3 football fields- and maybe I only saw 1 length of it. Even though the museum was open until 10, at 915 they started to push us out, so I spent one last moment in a big gallery with a bunch of French historical art. The last part of the audiotour would have been some Michelangelo statues, but I couldn’t find them in time before they started to push us out the door. But, for this type of museum I was happy with he 3 hours I got to spend there.
Outside I was treated to a gorgeous pink sunset that was happening across the way by the gardens. I made my way to a river bridge and from there the sunset got a lot brighter and was so pretty, so even though it was late and I had a long day, I had a smiling walk home.
I knew I needed to take it a little more easy after I overdid it on Friday, so Saturday I tried to sleep in and then was headed to another Monet museum. I got on the bus and was prepared for a 40 minute ride, but I didn’t get too far and suddenly the bus stopped and said it was the end. I prepared to wait for the next bus but the driver saw me and said, “no more bus”. I asked why and he said, “on Saturdays, buses can’t cross the Seine”. Well, that made no sense, but someone confirmed this and I looked and found no decent Metro way there- 3 different trains!- and to keep my plan I just decided to take an Uber. It was kind of fun because I had a nice driver and I did the Uber pool and in the back seat were 2 Missouri people that I chatted with all the way there, sharing tourist information along the way.
Finally at Marmottan, I was ready to tour- I had also been here with Jeremy and my friend Ken before. This was someone’s old mansion that they kept the original art in, and they were good friends with Renoir who painted their daughter in one of the main rooms. The special exhibit was about “Orientalism” which was an era of artists being obsessed with Middle Eastern culture- mostly in the 1800s. The funny thing is that a lot of the artists hadn’t been their so they would take clothing and jewels from there, dress up local women and then paint them, but you could obviously tell the difference. There was one major artist who did go and supposedly went to see a harem and made one painting of a woman bathing in a harem, and from this 1 painting so many people copied the patterns and looks. Some of my favorites were desert scenes from people who obviously had been there, you could see the intense heat in the skies they painted.
Downstairs its his museum is the greatest collection of Monet in all of the world. It is a collection that was from the Monet family, so very personal. The first one I saw is my favorite from lsat time, a lovely water scene with a sun so orange and bright you see it from far away and it looks unreal. The others I liked were a nice Dutch tulip field, and a train station that was amazingly active with big puffs of smoke and a giant old train. There were tons of water lily paintings- not as big as the ones in the Orangerie, but still fun to walk by and sit and enjoy from different angles and distances. It was amazingly quiet in this museum and I had this basement garden all to myself.
I decided that my other activity of the day was going to be to walk the famous boulevard of Paris, the Champs-Élysées. I found a bus that would get me there and the walk to the bus was through a nice park. I decided I would eat around here as the Champs-Élysées is pretty fancy, so it would probably be really expensive. I checked some reviews and picked a bakery that had nice sandwiches, though I was a little disappointed when I got there and it was a pretty small place with only 2 tables to sit for lunch, it was a busy bakery otherwise with locals picking up their daily baguettes and such. I had a quiche and as I was sitting there eating, I realized I hadn’t seen any buses on this street, and the bus stop was right outside the building, I started to wonder if the buses were running today and then just as I was finishing my lunch I saw one coming, so I ran out to catch it. I was cruising along and suddenly it was “everyone out, this is the end”, this time 2 stops from my planned departure. I looked and saw it was an extra 10 minutes of walking, so I just went for it. This was a nice area so there were clothing stores, fancy boutiques to look at along the way. The actual beginning of the walk I intended to do was at the Arc de Triumph, in the middle of a crazy traffic circle that we had to drive around on our last visit. It is a giant symbol of the city, made after Napoleon as a War Memorial. Being a popular tourist stop, it was surrounded by police and National Guard- though this also might be because it was Saturday and protests are very common in Paris. The Champs-Élysées starts here and then goes slightly downhill ending at the Tuileries Garden where I was yesterday. The boulevard used to be all about fancy dressed locals showing up to be seen, but overtime it was become more for regular people as well, but still is about strolling and shopping. The driving part of the street is 4 lanes wide and then the walking area was almost as wide on both side (though includes a bike lane). It was still pretty full of people despite the width and there were plenty of interesting things to look at though I was disappointed because fancy car dealerships have now moved out fo the area and it is mostly clothing, jewelry, and perfumes now. I was going to stop at a famous bakery- it was a super fancy building and I used their bathroom, but when I saw that a pastry was $5 extra to sit and eat, and I didn’t want to just walk and eat it here, I decided to wait until another time- there is a branch by my hotel.
About 2/3 down the walk I got to the “park-like” part of the Champs-Élysées and I noticed that they had it blocked off so you couldn’t drive there. I crossed over and then realized that police were also not allowing pedestrians either, which is strange because they were allowing people to walk out. I tried asking directions and info from the police and they just pointed to one side of the park. I started to walk there and realized I couldn’t go around either. Someone stopped to say it was because of protestors. I saw where I was and realized no buses would come here today, Uber I tried and they kept cancelling- probably because of road closures, so I was ready to get out of there and ended up walking over to a taxi to get a ride. Very nice driver, he was a young Algerian, but it was almost $20 to get home because the traffic was messed up, but I don’t think it would have been easy to get out otherwise, on the way I saw more and more road closures, but never any protesters, just the guards all ready for it with lots of big weapons and big police vans.
But, I had wanted an easy day, and here it was early evening and I decided to have another buckwheat crepe at the cafe by my place. It was nice weather and a fun afternoon activity to have that and a beer and take my time people watching. I grabbed a little tart at the bakery across the street and took it up to my room to have later in the evening when some thunderstorms came through and I could sit by the window and see the umbrellas come up and then see everyone start running when things got a little heavy and then the little streets became 1/2 filled with a river of water. I’m glad I was in for the evening!
Travelndreamer7 