Paris

The Orsay had been closed for renovation the last time I was in Paris with my mom back in 2001, so getting there was my one and only major desire. Since we weren’t spending too much time (only Sat afternoon, Sun and Mon morning) there, I knew we’d have to see it on Sunday, and, lucky for us, it was the first Sunday of the month which meant it was free to enter. So, we planned on being there when it first opened and were only 15 minutes late because of a street closure on our way. Having just come from Monet’s home in Giverny, we were especially keen to see his paintings, and there was a whole room full of them. Delightful. We took our time, looked at each one, and were allowed to take photos, so we spent quite a bit of time just in this room. It was really neat to see his house and gardens painted in several of his masterpieces and know that the green bench was the same one that we had sat on just the day before.

There was also a whole room dedicated to Van Gogh, and since we had stayed in Arles, which had been his residence for many of his paintings, we spent a majority of our total time looking at some of the work that he had done while living there. We also got to see many masterpieces of Renoir, Manet, Monet, Picasso, and Cezanne. In fact, we spent all of our time in the Impressionist galleries and left only because we had met a gentleman while we were visiting our friends Terry and Ann, and he had invited us to his apartment when we got to Paris.

So, Jean-Pierre picked us up at 3, took us around to see various sections of town, and then ended up at his apartment for drinks. The building had been constructed in 1910 and looked beautifully preserved. We didn’t realize it earlier, but he had been instrumental in maintaining the historical integrity of the building when it had been renovated in the 1990’s. We knew that he had been the head of an organization specifically to keep the historical character of many homes in the Figeac area, but we didn’t know that he had had a hand in planning the renovations of some buildings in Paris as well. After we toured his apartment, had our drinks, and saw his 200 pieces of art displayed, he dropped us off at Montmartre. This is a hill which has a beautiful church, Sacre Coeur, surrounded by a small village of restaurants and artists and thousands of tourists! It’s the highest point in Paris, so it’s pretty popular at sunset. But it had started to rain and proceeded to come down by the bucketfuls, so we cut our visit short and went back to our hotel area for dinner.

On Monday we had reservations in Beauvais, a town about 50 miles north of Paris, which services Ryan Air, the cheap European airline we used to get back to Dublin. So, we bid au revoir to Paris and got on the train after lunch in order to have a little time there to celebrate my birthday. Terry found a sweet little restaurant that served traditional French cuisine, and we had a wonderful dinner with French champagne and some really funny French people at the next table who kept trying to talk to us in French. Of course, we couldn’t understand everything they said (earlier I had mentioned that both of us together could remember only enough French to fit in a drop of spit, and it was even more true now). Their solution was to speak more loudly and use their hands to try to get their point across which, of course, called more attention to our ignorance. Next time we will have to do better, but this time we giggled and laughed all the way back to the hotel.