Day 8  Paris  -- D'Orsay Museum

Our boat trip was over.  We were taken by bus to our hotel at Paris' Republique Plaza.  This is north and east about 3 km from central Paris.  The hotel is in an old building, but it has been modernized so that inside, it was about like a hotel anywhere.  However, our room was on the fourth floor with a small arched window in a dormer (that would open) and a skylight (that would also open).  We had to stretch to see anything but the sky.  When we looked out, we saw the top floor of the building across the street.  It seemed to be apartments.  Soon after we arrived, our guide took us on a short tour of the surrounding area and showed us several restaurants that he thought we would enjoy.

Metro Station

              Then we set out for the D'Orsay Museum.  This museum is adjacent to the Seine in central Paris, so we needed transportation, or we would have a long walk.  We chose to take the Metro, Paris' subway system.  This meant learning how to buy tickets and finding our way to the appropriate train.  We managed with no problems.  A metro ticket cost 1.70 € (Euros) and once we were inside, we could go as far as the system went and transfer to other lines as much as we wanted with no extra cost.  With our guide's help, we determined that we needed to exit at the Concorde Plaza Station and walk the 2-3 blocks to the museum.  This was a simple ride with no transfers needed.  Concorde Plaza was the site of the famous guillotine used in the late 1700's to execute thousands of people.  We saw no evidence of what had happened there.  The plaza was adorned with an Egyptian Obelisk that had been a gift from Egypt and brought to Paris in 1836.  On the way to the museum, we walked through the Tulliares, the gardens  (mostly trees with some grass and a large octagonal pool and wide graveled walkways) that extend eastward from the Louvre.  There were hundreds of people sitting, running, walking, visiting, and just enjoying themselves.  There were a number of musicians playing at various places in the park providing a variety of interesting music.  We also had to cross the Seine River on a pedestrian bridge.  This bridge, the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor, is famous for its thousands of locks that have been fastened to the sides.  The lore is that if the lock is labeled with the name of a loved one, fastened to the bridge, and the key thrown into the river, the love will last.

Concorde Plaza -- Egyptian Obelisk

Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor

            

D'Orsay Museum

             The museum in an old train station that had been converted when Paris decentralized its train stations.  It was a grand building with an arched, glass paneled roof.  We especially wanted to see the collection of Monet paintings (and many other impressionist artists) that the museum is famous for.  We saw paintings of the water lily pond that we had seen at the Monet home and gardens.  The paintings were beautiful and we could easily the see the impressionist style of paint dabs and marks that were used to make the images.  There were many paintings and sculptures in the museum, and we spent several hours browsing through.  There was even a large Van Gogh collection.  We stopped our browsing to have lunch in the museum, eating on a balcony that overlooked central Paris and especially the Montemartre District on the hills to the north.  We thoroughly enjoyed the museum, but several hours of browsing is really tiring.  So now it was time to find our way back to the hotel.  It was simple -- back to Concorde Plaza and take the subway back to Republique Plaza.  We had no problems and arrived safely back at our hotel.  We had dinner in a small restaurant near the hotel and then retired for the evening.

D'Orsay Museum