I was really looking forward to visiting the Musée d'Orsay yesterday because it has a tremendous collection of impressionist and post-impressionist works (Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, etc). I was hoping it would also offer some Art Nouveau pieces, and I was in luck… there’s a whole gallery with nothing but Nouveau decorative arts! Now I see why people say you can’t really take in an experience like Musée d'Orsay in one day… it’s not that you can’t walk to every room in a few hours, but if it’s art that you like then you’ll be left feeling giddy and overwhelmed. I can see why my friend Peter has a museum pass so that he can go visit “his favorite pieces” for an hour at a time without buying a ticket.
I wasn’t fully prepared for how cool the museum building is, either. I read that it was built to be a train station, but it became obsolete because trains got longer and they didn’t make the building long enough to fit the new trains. It has gorgeous “Belle Epoque” architecture though, so they turned it into a museum. The paintings are all in galleries on the sides, because the huge central salon is a sunny 6-story-tall affair with a ceiling that’s mostly glass.
That was yesterday. Today is my last full day in France, and I want to try relaxing in the park a bit. The big park “Jardin du Luxembourg” near our house is full of people in the afternoon, so that’s where I am this morning. It’s peaceful! I’m sitting on a chair under a thick canopy of tall trees, listening to the trickle of the huge “Medici Fountain”, adorned by a larger-than-life statue of “Polyphemus Surprising Acis and Galatea”. And my only company are the ducks & pigeons, trying to make a breakfast out of crumbs left by yesterday’s visitors.
fin