A sleepy day, indeed. I know everyone wants to sleep in, so I slip out to buy our train tickets south on the iPad, but won’t accept my payment. So, I head out to the Gare de Lyon and navigate up to an automatic ticket counter, buy the four tickets and head back home. I finally get those sleepyheads up and out around noon. We make a pit stop at a good-looking pastry shop where we hop up onto the 4 seats at a little indoor counter to experience our first excellent croissants, along with some hot drinks.
Onto the subway and out at l’Orangerie, one of my favorite museums. We each get headsets and take our time examining the paintings by Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Modigliani, and, of course, Monet. Most spectacular is the installation conceived of by Monet as a gift to the harried citizens of Paris. First you walk into a completely white room, then into another circular room with an incredibly large painting of his lilies on each of the four walls, and then a third circular room with four paintings of lilies with willows. I ask the Valerie question: which is your favorite? to each child. And a picture of my flowers by the masters’:
Then we head out into the pouring rain and walk through the Tuileries Gardens to the Louvre. There was a long line to enter via the pyramid,
so we take one of the less well-known entrances in. Man, it doesn’t matter what day or what time of day, that place is always crowded! Not much time left before closing, so we hit the big three, as well as some Michaelangelo statues. Along the way, we see a sculpture that seems familiar to Tay:
TWO cynical philosophers:
Start wandering through halls with so many pictures on the walls. Matt becomes docent and starts giving us a tour with long stories about what is happening in each picture. When we then read the plaques, he is surprisingly close on a few! Way to have fun with art!
We walk back along the Seine and are way hungry and tired when we hit our hood. Decide to stop and eat an early dinner at the first place that looks good. Not so good, but great to sit and yak.I decide to wander after dinner, and love the Tim Burton-esque water sculptures in the plaza across from the Centre pompidou:
Back to hotel to pack for stowing bags in the morning and then hop an early train to Versailles.