Friday July 4
We walked to the Merto to the Musée de l'Orangerie. It's a small gallery dedicated to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and is most famous as the
permanent home of eight large Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet. AWESOME! It also
contains works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Sisley, Chaïm Soutine, Maurice
Utrillo, and others.
walk to the Metro
Place
de la Concorde
Rodin's Derniere Vision
We had a 10:30 reservation for a tour of Hotel de La Marine occupies the former royal Garde Meuble—the depository for the King’s furniture collections, crown jewels, tapestries, and decorative arts and later became the country’s naval headquarters for 200 years.
We were early so we walked over to the Place de la Concorde which has two impressive fountains, the Fontaine des Mers and the Fontaine des Fleuves & Obelisk of Luxor a 75-foot-tall red granite obelisk gifted to France by Egypt.
Place
de la Concorde
Hotel
de La Marine
We then took a bus to see the Chapelle Expiatoire, which is a Roman Catholic chapel constructed by Louis XVIII on the grounds where King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette had been buried after they had been guillotined, and it is dedicated to them as an expiation for that act.
Expiatory Chapel
The buses weren't as frequent as the Metro, and this was the longest we waited to get one. As we waited for the suggested bus, we noticed that many other routes went to the Louvre, so we grabbed the next one that came by.
We were early for our time slot, and it was lunch time, so we found a crepe stand and had a ham & cheese crepe and a Nutella crepe. Yum!
On our first visit we spent a whirlwind 2 hours flying through the Louvre. This time we wanted to take our time and see as much as we could. I hardly recognized the inside. Escalators to each of the wings and all different restaurants. We had 2:00 reservations and on Friday they are open until 9:00. We sopped for a cold drink and a snack and had dinner there later.
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, located near the Louvre, is
a beautiful monument that celebrates Napoleon's victories.
lunch!
Even with reservations there is quite a long queue to get into the Louvre. It was a hot and sunny day so nice to be outside.
Invitation to the Dance
The Hermaphrodite
Venus de Milo
Dying Slave
me in blue
view from one of the windows
Hercules slaying the Hydra
Winged Victory
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss
Captive ('The Dying Slave')
The Dying Slave
The French Crown Jewels
the best part of the Egyptian rooms was closed for renovations (the sarcophagus & mummies)
Marie-Antoinette collection
I think I wore these in the 80's....
dinner break
The Three Graces
Caryatides
view from a window
We went back to see a few things again before deciding we had "done it all". On the way to the Metro we stopped at cafe for some dessert.
Mont Blanc & Raspberry Tart (on shortbread)
It was a lovely treat to end our evening.
Tomorrow, we visit Versailles.
No comments:
Post a Comment