A feast for the eyes

Trip Start Jun 29, 2008
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Trip End Nov 27, 2008


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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Having purchased a 4 day museum pass, we have been busy the last 4 days visiting an array of wonderful mesuems around Paris.  The museum pass is good value if you wish to visit many musuems.  They are available as 2, 4 or 6 day passes.  They reduce the overall cost of visiting multiple sites, with a visit to 3-4 sites over each 2 day period leaving you ahead financially (and some visits only take an hour, meaning you can easily fit 3 sites into some days).  It also allows you priority entry at some sites (including the Louvre and the Orsay, bypassing some long queues).  The only problem (if you want to see it as such) is that visits must be on consecutive days, but the more days the pass is for, the cheaper the per day cost, so you could always take 1 or 2 half days completely off visiting sites (hanging out somewhere like the Luxembourg gardens).

Naturally we visited the deservably popular and well know Louvre and Orsay museums.  We had first visited the Orsay on the first Sunday of the month, which is free for many museums (we had also visited Rodin's sculpture museum and garden and the Cluny medieval museum), but having liked the Orsay so much, we decided to return and view some of our favourites again at a more leisurely pace.  We all enjoy the work of the Impressionists (having visited the Marmottan museum and enjoyed the work in the Orsay), so we also visited the Orangerie, for which Monet specifically painted a series of large works based on the water lillies in his garden at Giverny.  We had visited Monet's house and gardens earlier in the week, and enjoyed the gardens and town, but were disappointed by overcast weather with occasional showers and the regular problem there of too many visitors at once.

We did venture beyond the glorious Louvre and the Impressionist offerings, and visited the Hotel Invalides (with Napolean's tomb and the army museum), the Picasso musuem (although I don't particularly like his art, I admit he had talent, but he appears to have been quite a pompous, odious individual), and the Quai Branly museum (a relatively new museum, with a focus on indigenous cultures, which is housed in a modern architecturally designed building which to my eyes is much more aesthetically pleasing than the other modern structure, the well known Pompidou Centre).  We did also make it to the Pompidou Centre, the repository for modern art in Paris.  I do not generally find modern art appealing, however, with its inclusion on the museum pass, I felt it was worth a look.  It does not dissapoint your expectations, with it being a remarkably ugly structure, and including some of the anticipated modern "art" - canvases of a single uniform colour or blobs of various paint colours that your 2 year old could produce (where is the talent), and even some photos of noticeboards cluttered with pinned up notices much like mine was when I was studying (I didn't realise I had been creating modern art).  However, I was surprised and pleased to actually come across some works that I enjoyed and could appreciate the talent and creative thought that went into completing them.

The museum pass also covers some other sites (other than museums) which we had a look at - Notre Dame's tower, the glorious St Chapelle (with its stained glass windows), the Conciergerie (the old political prison which once housed Marie Antoinette), the Pantheon (previously a church, but now a shrine of the nation with famous residents including the Curies, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo), and the Arc de Triomphe.

All in all it was a busy 4 days and I feel we thoroughly deserved our day of rest today.  Indeed, our pace from now in Paris will be considerably slower - Tera has returned home to the States, and Susan and Seb have continued on their adventures.  We will spend time enjoying the markets, the shops, the food and wine (we have, of course, already been doing that) and the general ambience that is Paris.  We are looking forward to joining in to the Bastille day celebrations tomorrow, with a military parade along the Champs Elysee in the morning and fireworks at night.  Who could ask for more?
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