Well, this was actually last weekend, not this weekend. I am terribly behind! We had a four-day weekend last week, and then only 3 days of class this week, so I had so much work to do! After leaving my loving husband at the Lyon Airport on Sunday morning, I made my way to Paris. My hotel was an easy 15-minute metro ride away from the train station. I make it two stops and go to change lines. To my horror and shock, the only line that goes from where I am to remotely near my hotel is closed for improvements. From what I gather from the construction signs in French, only a few stops are closed on this line. I study all of my maps frantically and decide that my best bet for getting to the hotel is to get out and walk to the next metro stop and continue the walk there. Well, I get to the next metro stop only to find out, quelle horror!, that is too is closed. My feet have blisters and my back is about to break from the 40-50 lbs backpack. I finally figure out the bus system, which is far less clear than the metro system and take a bus to my hotel. The metro being closed near our hotel made the weekend full of walking, and later lots of wet pants.
Stephanie arrived a few hours later and then we went to meet up with Alice and her friends. We spent the late afternoon and early evening window-shopping on the Champs Elysees and café hopping. Onion soup and hot, spiced wine were our first stops, and they were delicious!
Crepes and hot chocolate were soon to follow, and then Alice and I stood in line at Laduree to purchase some outrageously expensive macaroons.
I bought the following flavors: licorice, café, salted caramel, cassis, orange blossom, and Colombian chocolate. I do not really get the whole macaroon thing; the texture just doesn’t do it for me. However, I clearly had not eaten the most expensive macaroons that exist. They were delicious! They had a much more uniform texture than most macaroons I have had, where the shell is too crunchy or gooey, the filling is too firm or too runny, etc. These really were perfect. Now I have a lovely pink box I can schlep around for a while.
Afterwards, we decided to go up the Arc de Triomphe at night and see all of Paris lit up.
A lot of stairs and 10 euro later, we had 360 views of Paris. It really is beautiful.
The Eiffel Tower
The Champs-Elysees
Monday morning we had a delicious breakfast at our hotel and then I hustled Stephanie out the door so we could get to the Orangerie before it opened. And yes! My planning obsessions paid off! We were first in line!
The Tuilerires gardens were beautiful in the soft morning light, and a bronze Rodin statue of “The Kiss” is outside the front door.
Back story: when I was a child, my mother gave me a book called something like, “Linea in Monet’s garden,” (incidentally, a French version was in the museum bookstore). It is the story of a young girl who learns all about Monet and his family and a broad overview of his art. She wanders through his famous garden at Giverny, sees the water Lillies, the green bridge, the willow trees. I don’t remember much of the plot, but at the end, she travels to Paris and sees his huge waterlilly paintings in the round room at the Orangerie. For whatever reason, this captured my imagination as a child and I made some sort of a goal to see these works. I saw them. And even among throngs of people, they were breathtaking. I would love them even if I did not have a childhood hope attached to them, but because I do it makes seeing the paintings so much more than beautiful art. So the moral of the story parents: books and books on tape of famous artists, musicians, people, etc can work wonders on your child, as I am living proof. I have many little interests placed in my mind from books or stories I heard as a child and I have never forgotten. I feel so blessed to have parents that sought out those things for me, and even more blessed to have a family around me that enables me to see these Monet paintings in real life.
So, here I am, and I still can’t believe it.
The rest of the museum was amazing, and the Orangerie is probably the highlight of my whole time in France thus far. There were a number of smaller works by the heavyweights of Impressionism: Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin, etc. I previously have not had an affinity for Renoir, and in many of his portraits, I do not like the women in them. But I suppose that is what he wanted-uncomfortable portraits. However, seeing Renoir in person changed that.
You can’t capture the light that draws you to the picture in a photograph. The skin of the woman glows radiantly, and the still life peaches next to her look like pure joy in a porcelain bowl.
There was an excellent special exhibit of Spanish impressionists, and I wish the book that was on the exhibit were in English, because it was fascinating. There was a painting of a courtyard full of orange trees by Santiago Rusinol y Prats that is now what I desperately hope heaven will look like. In addition, throughout the museum, older women were painting copies of famous art works, and they were shockingly good. What a lovely way to spend a Monday morning.
It was a few hours well spent, and by far my favorite museum in Paris.
Afterwards we braved the crowds for shopping. Everything in Paris is truly beautiful. Every window display is incredible; every lobby in a mall is perfect. So feminine and delicate in the most lovely way. Paris is just as beautiful as everyone says it is, and I didn’t thing I would find it to be so…lovely. I knew the patisseries would be incredible, but I did not know that the floral shops would be like a trip to paradise, or that I could love pastel colors. All I want some day is a giant armful of the most beautiful and huge white roses with just the faintest tips of green.
Stephanie and I headed to Fauchon, a famous store for French foodstuffs, Pierre Herme, and the Galleries Lafayette. The Galleries Lafayette are huge, and everywhere you turn there is something more beautiful and more expensive. It was amazing and horrifying at the same time.
After we have a lovely lunch at a café near our hotel, we braved the Louvre. We had our handy museum pass so we cut an incredibly long line, only to briefly feel successful.
The Louve is rather unpleasant. There are so many people and huge signs about looking our for pickpocketers and everyone is bumping into you. It is enough to make the sanest person feel crazy. We did go on Monday, which is their busiest day, and it was a French holiday, but we had no choice. There are incredible sculptures and paintings, but the overwhelming number of people kills a lot of the enjoyable museum strolling experience. We actually walked through most of the galleries and saw some very interesting things, but it was a bit exhausting. Oh, here is the Mona Lisa.
With a bit of time before dinner we decided to head to Montmarte and Sacre-Coeur. We got there just as the sun was setting and all of the many steps leading up were absolutely packed with hundreds of people watching the sunset over Paris.
We strolled down the rather sketchy street nearby to see the Moulin Rouge. Not that exciting to say the least.
Tuesday we saw the D’Orsay and the Rodin museums. And it rained…a lot. You can’t photos inside the D’Orsay, but it is inside what was once a hotel and train station. It is beautiful and full of so much more stuff than you originally think. Oh, here I am at the clock inside the top floor as you get ready to enter the impressionist wing.
It is on the top floor of the D’Orsay, and the gallery is lit by sky lights, so the light on the art changes throughout the day, just as impressionists sought to capture the changing light. Just as yesterday, the giant Renoir of people dancing in the park glows with an undeniable force, and it was magic to see in person. I was listening to my audio guide and seeing every famous impressionist painting you’ve ever seen and all of the sudden I turn a corner and who am I faced with? Chris Kimball from America’s Test Kitchen. I did like a triple take and geared myself up to introduce myself. Then, I see that he is in a rather uncomfortable looking fight with who I can only assume is his wife. I decided not to job hunt during marital distress and instead I am writing about it on my blog. But yeah, I saw a famous person for PBS watchers in Paris.
Steph and I had lunch in the exquisite restaurant in the museum, and then braved the rain for the ½ mile walk to the Rodin museum.
By the time we arrived at the Rodin museum we were totally soaked, so we breezed through what would otherwise be a lovely garden full of his statues and into the house museum. But we saw the famous “Thinker,” and a number of other statues.
Inside, his works were beautiful beyond what I expected. I have very little knowledge of the art of carving, so my appreciation is somewhat lacking, and certainly lacking refinement. I loved his series of larger than life hands, and all of the ways the hand of the statues were placed.
There was such emotion in the hands of his statues it was captivating. You could truly see bodies struggling to emerge from the marble, and appear smooth and emboldened. Finally, we left and walked through the Luxembourg gardens deserted on a rainy afternoon, and made our way to the train station and the way home.
To keep ourselves entertained of the way home, we decided to have a macaroon taste off. I had a salted caramel macaroon from Laduree and Stephanie had one from Pierre Herme.
In the end, I preferred mine, and Stephanie preferred hers. The Laduree macaroon was smaller, and the filling was a straightforward smoky, salted caramel. The Pierre Herme macaroon was oversized, and the caramel filling was much more like a caramel mousse or moussline, so it was more buttery and creamy than mine. Such a rough life we live!
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