We’ve made several trips to Paris, so we didn’t feel the need to meticulously plan out every attraction and every minute of the trip; we thought it’d be more fun to be spontaneous. And it has been, as yesterday’s post proves (if you follow my blog from Facebook, you missed yesterday’s post – Facebook deleted the link I posted there, claiming “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way”!)
But today, spontaneity had its price: more than an hour in line waiting to get into Museé de la Orangerie while people with reserved time slots whizzed past us. We were lucky, though – rain was in the forecast, but we only felt a little light drizzle while we waited.
Once we got through the line, we had plenty of time to see the entire museum. We spent a good part of that time contemplating Monet’s Les Nymphéas (Water Lillies), along with hundreds of new friends (only a few of whom were standing in front of the paintings while posing for Instagram). I took a few photos myself, but it’s really hard to take a good picture of the huge canvasses; the iPhone’s panorama function helps, but only so much.
We had lunch at the museum’s cafe – it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but leaving the museum was out of the question! Again, planning ahead would have helped….
After lunch, we explored the Heinz Berggruen exhibition; Berggruen was an art collector who had to flee Germany in 1936 because he was Jewish. He was in the US Army during the war and became an American citizen soon afterwards, but moved to Paris and opened a gallery specializing in modern art before eventually returning to Germany and opening the Berggruen Museum in Berlin, stocking it with his personal collection (he described himself as his own “best customer”), some of which was on exhibit at L’Orangerie. There was a lot of Picasso and Klee in the exhibit, like this portrait of George Braque (otherwise known as “Homme du Chapeau”) by Picasso.
I enjoyed the permanent collection (the Walter-Guillaume collection) more than the Berggruen exhibition. I especially liked the Utrillo paintings depicting Montmartre, like this one of Èglise Saint-Pierre, one of the churches we visited yesterday.
I also was taken by Utrillo’s “La Maison Bernot”, even though we didn’t see that building (and I don’t know if it still exists).
We made one more visit to the water lilies before leaving the museum; our timing was good, because it had rained pretty hard while we were inside, but there was just a little mist on our walk back to our Airbnb. The views from and of the Tuileries Gardens were, as usual, very nice; I was glad we were there while the landscaping in honor of the Olympics and Paralympics was still on display.
We returned to the apartment and noticed people working at the Louis Vuitton offices next door. A few people were on computers, of course, but most of the people we saw were sewing (or maybe designing).
We walked over to the local Westfield shopping center (Les Halles) so I could buy a Magsafe external battery for my phone. It was drizzling as we walked over, but absolutely pouring when we were ready to leave; the weather app said that the rain would end within the hour, so we spent the time looking for a place to have dinner. We’d passed Au Chien Qui Fume (The Smoking Dog) a couple of times and their menu and reviews were promising, so once the rain stopped, we walked over and had a delicious (and probably far too caloric) dinner.
Then it was back to the apartment to charge my new battery, and off again for another evening walk along the Seine, passing Èglise Saint-German L’Auxerrois on our way there.
And now we’re back in the apartment. There was a loud peal of thunder as I sat down to write this post, and lots of rain to accompany it – but it seems to have stopped for now. And so shall I.