Paris: part 2

While the focus of our trip was making our own art, when you go to Paris, there are a few things you absolutely MUST see.. one of these is the Lourve.  Museum. 

For one thing, it is absolutely enormous and situated at the heart of all the interesting stuff in Paris.  You can’t really miss it. 

We drove right through the grounds on our first day’s gallivant on the hop on hop off.  The big glass pyramid on the grounds seems so out of place.. but is certainly distinctive.

The Lourve

It was originally built as a fortress in the late 12^th century.  During the French Revolution the building was transformed into a public museum.  The museum was opened in 1793 to “preserve the National memory”.  Part of the building held the French Finance department, but in the 1980’s that part of government was moved and I.M. Pei ‘s glass pyramid with an underground lobby was put in place. 

The Lourve is owned by the French government, but is becoming more independent. 

It is an enormous building, we spent hours there.. I got lost in Egyptian Antiquities as it is only one of eight curatorial departments. 

It was well worth the visit, but the most interesting work of art to me was the Mona Lisa. 

I had never heard of the Orsay Museum and wasn’t all that excited when the girls proposed a visit, but it was by far the most exciting, the most worthwhile for me, of the museums.  This is where the impressionists are housed. 

The museum was once the main railway station in Paris, and later a hotel.  It has ‘rooms’ where the artwork is held and the works of Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh have a special place at the museum.  I spent a lot of time in those rooms…  But there were some other paintings that took my breath away as well.. Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, a sculpture of  a young dancer by Degas was amazing.  I saw Whistler’s mother and Jean-Francois Mellet’s The Gleaners.  Some were larger than I imagined, some more moving, some less so.  But if I ever went back, this is the first place I would go!

We up the Eiffel Tower,  checked out the Arc de Triomphe and ‘The thinker’ from the top of the big red bus, took refuge from a storm inside Sacre-Coeur.  We visited second hand stores and markets.  We crossed a bridge over the Seine River, gazed upon Notre Dame de Paris and heard their ‘call to prayer’ (June’s comment, not mine!) spent more than an hour in the oldest church in Paris while a band played French music outside, somewhere in Paris. We saw the tapestries in the Musee de Cluny, ate fondue, frogs legs and tar tar..  We wandered the streets of the Latin quarter, the Right bank, the Left bank.. We checked out art stores and little shops throughout Paris as well as Saint Germaine. 

And that is just what I remember at this very moment.  Paula, Colleen, Gina and June and I walked and walked and talked and talked and ate and ate and painted.. I came home with seven works of art and feel so much more confident of my creative abilities.  Whether that be painting, or writing. 

A block from our place was this castle and across the way, the metro!

The streets of Paris

The food and wine was amazing! 

It was just an amazing adventure and I owe these women so much.  It was something I will cherish forever and if they ever want to go somewhere else.. and are willing to have me tag along.. I am in!!!