Paris - Day 2 - D'Orsay and Luxembourg Gardens - 7/13/05

It has been so hot here, we opted to do 1-2 museums today and hopefully enjoy a little air conditioning. We walked toward the Place de la Concorde to go to the l'Orangerie museum but discovered it was closed for remodeling. We then crossed the river and had a hugely enjoyable experience wandering around the d'Orsay museum.

We separated from the girls with plans to meet later and Steve and I headed upstairs to see the Impressionist paintings which I thoroughly enjoyed. We skipped the sculptures on the first floor. I was familiar w/several of the artists and it was so nice to see their painings w/the brillant colors. I eavesdropped on a english tour of students and learned a lot about a Renoir and a self portrain of Van Gogh. The crowds were pretty bad, but it was still nice to see the paintings. We had just traveled through Arles so we had seen where Van Gogh had lived and painted some of his works.

There were several rooms of Art Nouveau works and we found a few works by our newly discovered artists, Prouve and Galle exhibited. It was like running into some old friends. Thanks to the education provied in Nancy by Marion.

We then headed to the Luxembourg gardens where we took a break in the shade and had a 20e lunch of french fries, a tart, water and beer. Pretty outrageous for a midday snack, but what the heck! we're on vacation.

We got to see the kids sailing their little sail boats on the pond which was pretty cute to watch.

Tomorrow is Bastille Day, no idea yet as to what time the parade starts, despite picking up a Pariscope events magazine.