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Published: August 29th 2011
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Sunday 28th August, 2011
Paris, France
Our hotel balcony near the Place d’Italie looks out over the city skyline, and if I stand at the very edge, and look to the Right, I can see the top half of the Eiffel Tower.
As all good tourists in Paris, we went to see it up close yesterday. Us and thousands of others.
This was after our visit to the Musee d’Orsay, (8 euros)which has a fantastic collection of art pieces from the impressionists and post-impressionists; Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sisley, Van gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Delacroix, (in fact anyone who was anyone in the art movement in the late 19th Century) and many more. The gallery is HUGE. The building was a very glamorous) railway station, in it’s first life, but it now houses an amazing collection of modern art on two levels. It took several hours to just see the first half of the first level, before we needed to clear our heads and have some food. The restaurant is also built on a magnificent scale: chandeliers, frescoes, gilt, mirrors, painted ceilings, like a rococo
ballroom, the mirrors giving the illusion that it goes on for ever. The windows overlook the Seine where tour boats were taking tourists to see the sights. The menu ranged from 7euro to about 20 euro, and the meals were delivered fast. Revived by a bottle of water; eau de Perrier, and fortified by some food and a strong espresso, we set off once more to look at the paintings. By 3pm we had looked at the rest of the downstairs which focussed on the pre-impressionists, and impressionists, and then explored the second floor, where the collection of post-impressionists was found. It was so overwhelming to see all these paintings in real life. To be able to see the scale of many pieces, after seeing numerous reproductions in books which really give no real understanding of the size of these works. The most surprising were some of the works by Toulouse-Lautrec, which were enormous patchworks of bits of canvas, glued to board 3 by 3 meters, and painted as a sketch in hasty brushstrokes, leaving much of the canvas raw. Some of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work is on cardboard. Amazing. Such surprises waited at every turn. The brushstrokes of Monet, the largeness
of some of the points of colour on some pointillist works, the brush marks of Gauguin, it was such a privilege to be able to see the works so intimately, to stand and study them up close, together with thousands of others, all on the same mission. Although some people were there to compare the artworks to that of their daughter; they stated that she could paint just as well or tick paintings off on a list: No they don't have van Gogh's starry night). It was at times difficult to get to see a painting for the press of people in the gallery, but by and large it was possible to move through the rooms without too much hassle. If visiting the musee d’orsay, or any other gallery, it is important to have good, comfortable shoes, and to have a break with a coffee and a sit down. Even then, we walked out totally saturated to the point that we couldn’t visually fit another thing in, and with very, very tired feet. It was to this background that we arrived at the Eiffel Tower after catching the train and walking from the station, saw the throng of people, the
snaking queues for the 3 lifts which take tourists to the various levels, and decided “no way!” There was no queue for the one set of stairs – not tempted in the slightest. Perhaps a lesson in trying to do too much in one day.
After snapping a few photos to prove we'd been there, we thought that a nice café would be more the speed we were looking for, and we caught a taxi to Laduree, a café specialising in elegant silver service afternoon teas and famous for it’s macaroons. Aahh a VERY nice cafe. My sister tells me that she has seen a queue outside this café every time she has been in Paris. Today there was no queue when we arrived. We were ushered to a table in the upstairs room, the menu featured pages and pages of Patisserie, and pages of coffee’s, teas, wines and champagne. Very elegant. The citrus tart and three citrus infusion was delicious, the tea like drinking orange blossom perfume as it filled my mouth. Afterwards, Leena went to the shop next door, to purchase some macaroons to take home. The queue there snaked up the length of the shop and back
again, but eventually she emerged with her pastel bag of elegant morsels.. I refused to walk any more for the day. No more walking. A minor tantrum moment. A taxi back to the hotel for a rest (a well spent 16 euros). After dark, we decided to go for dinner to the St.Germain des Pres area where there are lots of little cafés in little alleyways. We caught the metro to this area, (yet another new mode of transport to learn) changed trains once, found our way to a lovely restaurant and sat on the sidewalk enjoying the cool evening, and watching life go by. This is paris.
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