Les musées et l'art de Paris
Trip dates: January 27, 2017 - February 3, 2017
For our museum pass days (we did 2, because 2 days sounded like enough for us as we're not super huge museum people), we intended to get up early and get through a lot of different museums to really get our money’s worth. Well, of course, we got up and left by 11 each day instead, which is about par for our course.
Day 1
Musée de Cluny - museum focused on the Middle Ages, with art, tapestries, and sculptures.
We didn’t spent a lot of time here, but it was right next to our hotel so it was easy to swing by as a first stop on our museum tour. The major highlight was the “The Lady and the Unicorn”, a series of 6 tapestries concerning the 5 senses and a sixth that is open for interpretation around unique desires (specifically "À mon seul désir"). Lishan had read a book that was inspired by these tapestries and wanted to check it out!
Musée de l'Orangerie - art exhibit of impressionist and post-impressionist works, including a special exhibit designed by Claude Monet for a number of his water lilies and other garden paintings.
The area that had Monet’s paintings was really calm and relaxing since they were oval and minimalist, allowing the viewer to really focus on the large mural paintings. The bottom of the exhibit had a number of other artists on exhibit such as Renoir, some Picasso, and others.
The Louvre - well, it’s the Louvre! It was crazy just how beautiful and large the Louvre is. Knowing it's big conceptually is very different from actually being inside and just seeing how it just keeps stretching on and on. The museum is massive and pretty daunting with beautiful pieces of art everywhere. It was also just crazy how the museum itself was such an amazing work of art.
We didn’t do a ton of pre-research on how to optimally navigate around the museum, so other than a few items, we were pretty much wandering around. This meant we missed out on the Venus de Milo, but that’s part of our current travel philosophy that we have to be OK not doing/seeing every single thing out there. (Though this is also a coping mechanism for when we do miss out on stuff!)
We did see the Mona Lisa, which had a pretty good amount of people huddled around it, with many taking selfies (lol). I can’t imagine what it’s like in high season, because even in low season, there were a good number of people jostling around to get close enough to take pictures.
On the way out, we walked past the Pont des Arts which is (was) famous for all of the many lovers' locks along the bridge. Unfortunately, all those locks actually caused a part of the rail to collapse in late 2016, and they were all removed and the sides of the bridge were replaced with glass or other clear panels. However, there are still a small number of locks that had been added that we were able to find.
The Louvre made us pretty tired with all the walking, so that took us until the end of the day. First day down, only 3 museums hit. That was really the goal of our day 1 plan, so not bad!
Day 2
This day was a doozy - we did a lot!
Notre-Dame towers - popped by in the morning to climb the towers, check it out in our earlier Paris post!
Conciergerie - this was a palace and also the prison where Marie Antoinette was held during the French Revolution. There were a lot of signs with information about the French Revolution, but it just served to make us more confused rather than really help paint a broad picture of the revolution. We couldn’t keep track of who was in power, who was persecuting whom, what was going on, etc.
Musée d'Orsay - we went to the Musée d'Orsay after the Conciergerie. It was also a pretty art museum that is housed in an old train station. The layout of the museum made it kind of hard to find stuff, and we were on a time schedule to fit in as much as possible on this day, so we didn't see everything that the museum had to offer. The d'Orsay had a good variety of paintings and sculptures, especially a lot of Impressionist work that Lishan was a fan of.
Rodin Musem - since we had the museum pass, we popped by the Rodin Museum on the way to Napolean’s tomb just to check out The Thinker, since it was free/included in our pass.
Napolean’s Tomb - this is a huge building and a very elaborate tomb for Emperor Napolean Bonaparte I and two of his brothers and other military leaders. It felt a bit ostentatious, but I guess that sort of fits Napolean's MO and role in France's history.
Musée de l'Armée - this was just north of Napolean's tomb and we had about 20 minutes here before it closed! We basically only had time to see the old uniforms, guns, swords, and other knick-knacks from the Napolean era, but they had a lot from WW1/WW2 as well. Probably could have spent a lot longer here if we had arranged our time differently. Oh well!
Phew! We saw a lot in 2 days blitzing through the museums, but it was kind of perfect for us. It didn't feel like we missed out on too much, given we could still choose to go to other museums in the future if we wanted. Having the ability to skip the line did save us a little bit of time too, which was handy. Overall, we would recommend it for first timers!
OK - food post is next. Get ready to drool! Just kidding... but really, maybe a little.
