Day Fiftyseven - Jul 17, 2012
Paris, France
Daily Didactic
We started our morning early, with an eye to getting to Versaille in time for a relatively short line. Unfortunately our early is not your early, so despite our best attempts we rolled in about 10:00am. At that late morning hour there was at least a two (probably three) hour line snaking back and forth across the square out front. We've seen a lot of palaces this summer. We hopped back on the train. Next stop the Catacombs. At 11:00, there was a good two hour line to get in. We've seen one catacomb this summer, good enough. Next stop Notre Dame. This line was 15 minutes and the building lived up to its billing as the quintessential gothic cathedral. From Notre Dame we crossed and walked along the left bank of the Seine to the Orsay Museum. The Orsay primarily houses post Louvre French art dating from 1848 to 1915. The building itself is a ridiculously attractive old train station built in the final years of the 1800s. It has the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings in the world and we spent our afternoon looking at stuff by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Seurat, and Van Gogh. Resurfacing late afternoon, we were ready for a mind clearing stroll and headed to look at the National Opera building. It was too late to go in, but we walked around it and admired it's architecture. A little famished by this point, we caught the metro back to the Latin Quarter and revisited the restaurant of our second night, for some more escargot and an amazing blue cheese roast beef plate. After a failed attempt at taking in some local jazz at a nearby basement bar (ten euro cover apiece and some "we don't need your business" customer service), we called it a energetic and rewarding day in the early evening and took in the season premier of Breaking Bad on iTunes. A fits and starts kind of day.
Today's Photos
