Paris - Day 3 - 9/1/09

We woke up to a cool, rainy day... and we were SO excited!  After spending this summer in the hot, hot, hot Florence heat, we welcomed the change in weather.  We took the train to the Rodin Museum area and had breakfast at a cafe where we had the best ham and cheese omelet ever made!  After breakfast we went to the Rodin Museum.  This museum is beautiful!  It is located in central Paris in a historical hotel on 7 acres of land.  They used all the land to make a wonderful garden displaying Rodin's sculptures in addition to the hotel filled with his smaller sculptures.  

This is a picture of me in the gardens looking at the back of the hotel.

The Thinker

This is probably Rodin's most famous sculpture.  It was actually first created at part of his "Gates of Hell" sculpture depicting Dante's Inferno.  In these gates the figure was less then 60 cm tall.  Due to the huge success and deeper meaning of this Thinker, Rodin then went on to create the larger version, which is now what is most famous.  

This is are the "Gates of Hell."  This work is so detailed and intricate.  After this creation, Rodin went on to enlarge most of these tiny sculptures from the door into "life-size" versions.  Can you see the Thinker in this?

See the three figures at the very top?  The Thinker is below.  He is "thinking" on everything that is happening in the Inferno.  There are many deep analogies that go along with every single one of these figures, I am sure my art history friends are cringing at my simplified explanation.

Even though it was raining, we had a very nice time walking around these beautiful gardens.  We had fun "reenacting" the different statues...

After a wonderful morning at the Rodin Museum, we headed to the Orsay Museum.  We LOVED this museum!!  This museum picked up where the Louvre stops (in the historical timeline).  I think one of the reasons that we liked this museum so much was because it was very different then anything we can see here in Italy.  A lot of the works in the Louvre were Italian and for a lot of them, we felt like "we had seen it before."  But the paintings at the Orsay were a completely different time period and style.  We were not expecting to see SO many paintings that we recognized.  It was thrilling for us, and we are not by any means "art buffs" (apologies to both of our artist moms). 

This is J inside the Museum.  It was once a train station and it still has that "grand central station" feel.  It was beautiful.  Just walking in, it took a second to catch our breath!  

In Paris they let you take pictures of all the works of art, in both the Louvre and Orsay.  We took a lot of pictures of the famous works.  These are a few of our favorites:

Claude Monet, Poppies, 1873

Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of the Artist, 1889 

(J's favorite)

Edgar Degas, Blue Dancers, circa 1893

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1888

(My favorite - I had the poster all through college, it was awesome to see it in person!)

Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Family, 1858-1867

(It was so difficult to just choose a few pictures to post, there were SO many!  We saw works by Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Whistler, Cezanne, Munch, Seuart,  and Manet - to name a few.)

This is outside the Museum.

After we left the museum we had a beer at a cafe to rest our feet.  The sun came out and we took a walk by the river, through the Tuileries Gardens at the Louvre, to Concorde Square and up Champs-Elysees.  It was lovely, but my feet were killing me!

Here is J. during the first part of our walk.  

Taking a break in the gardens facing Concorde Square.  

After our walk, we did a little souvenir shopping before supper.  We set out to walk to the beautiful island for supper, but we got about a block away from the hotel and my feet decided that was far enough.  Fortunately, they stopped at a wonderful cafe where we had ham, cheese and egg crepes - delicious!

We had a fantastic visit to Paris and definitely fell in love with this city.  It makes our "top 5" list of cities we love.  We know we will be back!