Paris Day 5 - Free Museum Day (Louvre, L'Orangerie, Musee D'Orsay)

11/4/2012

Free museum day! I timed our whole trip just so we would be in Paris for the first Sunday of the month. Yup, especially for this day. When you total up the admission costs for 4 adults to the individual museums, it could easily total 100 euros per person. That is, depending on how many museums you can make it to in one day... and how many museums you are actually interested in going to. I knew I wanted to take our parents to the Louvre, L'Orangerie, D'Orsay and Rodin. There are several others I would've liked to add to the list, like climbing up the Notre Dame or Arc de Triomphe, but we agreed it would be a waste of time when there's hundreds of years of art to be seen. Maybe next time...

A list of free Paris museums and their schedules:

http://en.parisinfo.com/guide-paris/money/free-admission-and-good-deals/guide/free-admission-and-good-deals-in-museums-and-monuments_free-every-day-all-year-round

We got up at 7am today to go to the Louvre. We left at 7:45 and got there around 8. It’s actually a five minute walk from our apartment to the back entrance of the Louvre, but we spent some time taking pictures—FINALLY! No random people in the pictures!!!—so by the time we got in line, it was 8am.

I'm still in awe we got a shot with no strangers in it!

Yes, there was already a line, but it was probably only 20-30 people ahead of us. By the time the museum opened, the line was snaking out the back of the Louvre.

Immediately, we went to the Winged Victory:

Then up to Mona Lisa, as they are in the same wing (Denon).

We took in the sights of the paintings on the Mona Lisa floor before leaving for the Richelieu wing to see the Venus de Milo. They are the three biggest attractions.

Pickpocket! Call the police!

Then Angel said, "we’re done." Fini.

But it’s Dad’s first time here, and I really like the Louvre, so for the first time, majority won. Usually Angel wins, hands down, from sheer temper alone. :P

The Cour Marly has some beautiful sculptures that Angel and I somehow missed out on last time... oh wait, she was rushing me out of the Louvre last time. I remember now!

We all really liked the horse sculptures. A baby IM Pei pyramid shelters these formerly outdoor sculptures, as they are showing signs of wear and tear from being outdoors. The practice of sheltering outdoor sculptures dates back to the 1870s. I had no idea it was that early in time; I thought people only recently became more concerned with preservation.

Poor baby's tired... and we're only on our first museum of the day!

You probably can't see the sculpture in the back too well, but it's a boy lassoing a turtle. Pretty much sums up Angel and me. She's a tyrant!

We went to the Napolean III apartments, where we saw an interactive video about how to make porcelain. Damn, it’s labor intensive! Over 15 craftsmen’s expertise go into making a single vase, and that doesn’t include the workers needed to prep and make the raw materials.

We also saw Saint Mary Magdalene’s wooden sculpture by a Dutch craftsman. There is a locked cabinet in her hair, which we thought was pretty cool. There were a lot of small holes on her feet. I wondered aloud what that was, and Angel replied, “Either termites or woodpeckers. Take your pick.”

Saint Mary Magdalene

Something we didn’t see last time was Michelangelo’s The Captive Slave. We all thought the sculpture looked more like a man leisurely bathing himself… not a slave. And definitely not a captive one. 

The Captive Slave

Apparently he made another sculpture similar to The Captive Slave, which he called "The Dying Slave." Both sculptures were meant to hold up Pope Julius II's tomb, but due to a shortage of money, the pope ordered him to use the remaining money to finish the Sistine Chapel instead. Wise choice, I'd say.

There is a vast collection of sculptures in the Louvre, ranging from the Grecians in 100AD, to Romans, Italians, Spanish. The artists have somehow over the years divined a mathematical formula of the proportions of what a prime male specimen ought to look like:

There are signs all over the place forbidding flash photography and touching the art. That's why it is so maddening to see so many god damn Chinese tourists touching the sculptures as if this was their own backyard. The signs forbidding you to touch the art are picture signs, with a red slash through a hand—not language signs. 

Apparently it’s not only English they don’t understand. 

They were petting the sculptures like monkeys at a zoo; they’ll wander by and touch the sculptures and then pose with them in obnoxious poses… ugh I wanted to tell them to stop being so rude! AND there were so many flashes going off!!! I don’t understand why the Louvre workers aren’t more Nazi-like and crack down on it, but there were so many flashes going off and nobody was reprimanded. No wonder the paintings have to be touched up so often.

Look at this little monster:

Look a little closer... *Shudder* Positively wicked.

Afterwards, we went to L’Orangerie, where we saw Monet’s famous Les Nympheas. It covers six entire walls. Mom and Dad really liked it. I was going to take a picture of them next to it, but the signs clearly say you can’t take pictures. That’s not what I remember from last time, as I have a picture of me next to it. I swear I would’ve obeyed the signs had I seen it, but I don’t think there was a sign last time.

Always eating :P Waiting in line to get into L'Orangerie.

We went to Musee D’Orsay after that, a short walk across the bridge. Everywhere we went today, there was a line. But at D’Orsay, it was really quite charming. The line was winding like crazy, but there was no rope cordoning off one portion of the line from the other. Yet, everybody respected the invisible markers and wound around the line like clockwork. I guess if you try cutting, people will yell at you anyway?

Musee D'Orsay

D’Orsay is housed in a converted train building from the Victorian era and it is absolutely beautiful inside. There’s lots of light streaming down and it gives the sculptures a hazy glow. It’s a big Impressionists museum, with many paintings from Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Toulouse, etc. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the museum, so the best I got was a sneaky shot from the second floor... hey, it was a gray area.

Van Gogh’s A Starry Night was on display, which we missed out on last time as it was on loan to another museum. As we entered the particular room it was housed in, Mom’s eye was immediately drawn to the painting, even though it was in a line of similarly-sized paintings and there was nothing shouting, “This is Van Gogh!” It wasn’t very prominently displayed, let’s just say. But Mom found her way there immediately and she really liked the painting. It wasn’t until Angel reached her side that Mom found out it was a really famous painting.

By this point, Angel was reaching her point of “that’s all the museum I can handle in one day.” But then she found the brochure advertising their temporary exhibit, L’Impressionisme. It’s a curated collection of art and clothing from the time period. I asked a worker how much it cost, but this being the 1^st Sunday of the month, she said it was free. There was a long line to get into the exhibit as well, and as you reach the front, they hand you a ticket for admittance. Which is weird, because it was already free and nobody was checking the tickets.

The dresses on display were very detailed, from the 1870s. They had very small waists back then. The fans and hats were really elaborate. It was sad because we weren’t allowed to take pictures. There were a lot of paintings by Renoir in there, as well as Monet and others to complement the dresses. It was really cool because you could see the juxtaposition of art and real life and they do a wonderful job of attaching stories to each part of the exhibit. Some of the artists actually bought dresses for their models because they wanted dresses to emphasize a certain feel to their paintings. Some artists would get attached to certain dresses and one painter in particular painted the same dress on at least two different women. 

There was a painting of a ball scene in Paris, and the primary female in the painting wore something very much like the white ballgown in My Fair Lady. I wondered if the costume designer ever saw this painting? When it was first painted, someone criticized, “One tailcoat is ugly. Two even uglier. A bunch together makes this the ugliest painting I’ve ever seen.” I thought the painting was very nicely done, but I think Impressionists were the leisurely bourgeois class and favored realistic, pastoral or country settings much more so than fancy balls.

On the top floor of D'Orsay is a restaurant, where there is a Victorian clock still in working order. You can see Sacre Coeur outside! It's a breathtaking view, although sadly, my picture can't do it justice as I was too far away.

See Sacre Coeur on the right?

I wanted to go to Rodin (our last museum of the day) to get shots of Mom and Dad with The Thinker. I had already planned it in our schedule and they all knew we were shooting to go to four museums today.

Rodin sculpture outside the L'Orangerie

But it was 3pm and they were tuckered out from a day of museums. Mom doesn’t even like museums very much in the first place, and Dad doesn’t like walking. He said there are a bunch of Rodins in the Stanford Canton museum, and The Thinker is one of them, as well as the Gates of Hell. How many freakin' copies did Rodin make of these two sculptures?! Since Dad already saw them at Stanford, he didn't want to walk the 20 minutes to see the “real” versions.

And Mom doesn’t even know what The Thinker is, so she didn’t care if we missed it.

Somehow, while I was fascinated and reading one exhibit or another, Angel managed to weasel the thought into Mom’s head that if we skipped Rodin, we could go to Angelina instead. Mom was super-excited by this idea. *sigh* Angel, Angel… what a little rat.

Angelina is famous for their hot chocolate and mont blanc. Before we came to Europe, Mom read an article that a Taiwanese woman living in Paris wrote about Angelina, and Mom has really wanted to go ever since (not that she drinks hot chocolate).

So we left our free day of museums behind, walked directly across the Tuileries and Angelina’s was only half a block away on our right side. There was a line there as well, so we got in line. Unfortunately, the line moved really slowly and the lady behind us was smoking. After thinking about it, Mom decided she doesn't drink hot chocolate, and isn't all too crazy about a chestnut dessert either, and no matter how famous a restaurant is, it ain't worth getting cancer over. As we could not stand the smell of the lady's cigarette, we left.

Plus, I make a better hot chocolate any day. Yes, Angelina's hot chocolate is good, but when you're making it for yourself, you can dump in all the rich, expensive dark chocolate you want and not have to care about the food costs. Same reason why you never order truffle anything at a restaurant-you'll just have to return it to the kitchen because there's no way they can make it taste all truffle-y and sell it to you at a reasonable price. While you can dump in a whole bottle of truffle oil for one portion of mac n cheese that you're making just for yourself.

Dad returned to the apartment and we went to Laduree so Angel could show Mom their stuff. Oh my god, there was a line there too! 

We then went to LeNotre to use off my voucher. Only to find out that it was closed! After trudging down the whole length of the Tuileries! Ugh. The hours were completely wrong; it said it was opened tous les jours from 3-6pm. Well, it was 5pm and not a soul in the place! The lights weren’t even on! WTF does tous les jours mean to the French, if not “every day”? How does anyone ever know the real opening hours, if the times posted are all wrong?

So we walked by the Place de la Concorde, shortcut through the Place de Madeleine to go to Monoprix… and it turned out that they were closed as well! Grrr. We walked to Rue Montorgueil only to find out that Marche U and Franprix were closed too. Thank God we bought waaaay too much food yesterday, or we would’ve been screwed for dinner tonight.

Sunday is apparently still a day of rest in this part of the world. We encountered it in Vienna and I think Munich is like that as well. In Paris, supermarkets and most stores are closed. Restaurants are open, as well as museums. But that’s it. Nothing else.  Booo!!!! We walked all around Paris and all the supermarkets were closed! ;( Some are even closed on Monday as well, as a “bridge” to start the week. Good God, how many days of rest do they need?

We like to buy food at the supermarket and come back and cook in our cozy apartment. Especially as it is freezing ass cold outside.

That way, we can all shower first, feel refreshed and clean, then eat in the comforts of our pjs and warmth. We can drink wine, eat at leisure without having to worry about rude French waiters... or having to wait an hour for the bill to arrive. And we definitely won't be eating any overpriced, not-so-tasty tiny-ass portioned entrees. Oh yeah, we learned our lesson well enough last time: no restaurants this time around.

Our dinner was a delicious composition of Bordeaux wine; puff pastry tart with cream sauce, mushrooms, peas and bay scallops; Quiche Lorraine with jambon and chunks of emmenthal cheese, and Cote D’or chocolates. A perfect meal for the end of the day J