Yesterday, I spent my morning biking around the big Paris monuments - past Hotel de Ville and Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Tuileries, up the Champs Elysse and around L'Etoile down, then on to the Eiffel Tower with a brief detour down Avenue Foch. After that, I peddled over to the Musee D'Orsay.
Being that it's August and at the height of the tourist high season, I expected there to be really long lines to get in. But as luck would have it, there was no line at all! I took that as a sign and went inside.
The Musee d'Orsay was originally a train station, built for the Universal Expedition of 1900. Now, it houses the national collection of art from the period of 1848 to 1914 - which includes the impressionists and post-impressionists. It's a stunningly beautiful building in its own right:
There are entire rooms filled with Renoirs, Monets, Van Goghs ... it's just incredible.
"Gossip Girl" fans (yes, I proudly include myself in that group) will remember that this is the place where Blair Waldorf meets Prince Louis. They bond over a shared love of Manet's "The Picnic."
Like Blair, I spent a healthy amount of time standing in front of the painting. Unfortunately, no prince appeared - although I did get pushed by a decent number of sweaty non-princes who also wanted to see the painting. So there is that.
All told, a lovely day.
No comments:
Post a Comment