Orsay, Eiffel et Seine

We decided we needed another dose of the Musee d'Orsay today - those Manet's are so addictive! But first, the usual breakfast of French bread, fromage, jam, tea, coffee and bananas. Yes, bananas are getting consumed by the handful by greedy Aussies all over Paris, so it's a wonder there are any bananas left because half of the current Parisian population at the moment are Australiens! Bananas are cheap, big and plentiful here - just like the Aussies!
Already we're au fait with the Metro and it's easy to get anywhere in Paris by train. Metro stations are everywhere - the next station to our Cadet Metro is only about 5 minutes walk away! Trains arrive every couple of minutes and the colour-coded system is very easy to understand (we're on the pink line). We've walked scores of kilometres so far but today we took the Metro to the Louvre and walked from there - after taking corny photos in front of the palace and the glass pyramid - through the Tuileries and onto the Orsay, which was quiter than yesterday. I made a beeline for Dejeuner sur l'Herbe and stood in front of it in rapt concentration for a long time while Nettie sat under the beautiful curved railway station roof and watched real people go by. There was hardly anyone else but me around the Dejeuner. After feasting on that masterpiece, I moved on to Olympia for another good look. With both pictures, I was as close to Victorine Meurent's face as it's possible to get and she's as beautiful and haughty as she was 150 years ago; in Dejeuner she has an enigmatic look while in Olympia she's more blasé.

We returned to Rue Cadet for lunch at a local brasserie and then indulged in a chocolate pig covered in pink almond-flavoured icing and a strawberry tart. The French eat this stuff all the time and don't get fat so we should be okay:

Then we collapsed in readiness for the big night and at five pm dragged ourselves out of bed and into our smart casual gear and took the Metro to Rue Rivoli where a bus drove us to the Eiffel Tower.
Anyone who's been to this landmark knows what a knockout it is to see it "up close" for the first time. The tallest building in the world for 41 years. And, when you're up close you see how delicate it is. Consider these amazing facts, courtesy of Wikipedia: "The pig iron structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tonnes while the entire structure, including non-metal components, is approximately 10,000 tonnes. As a demonstration of the economy of design, if the 7,300 tonnes of the metal structure were melted down it would fill the 125 metre square base to a depth of only 6 cm"!

Of course, it's a real tourist trap, with busloads of rubberneckers arriving every few seconds. We were herded into a queue and then onto an elevator for the ride to the restaurant on the first level 58 metres up. We were lucky to be seated with a lovely couple from Wollongong who'd been travelling all over Europe for 10 weeks. The highlight of the meal was the foam. I've never had foam served to me before, at least not in a restaurant. This was a mascarpone foam with truffle oil, though it didn't really taste of anything at all so it was a relief that there was real food underneath!

The cruise along the Seine was lovely, even with all the tourist-trap trappings. It was especially beautiful to see Parisians dancing the tango au bord de la Seine.
By the time we got back to the Tower it was night and that's when it really comes into its own. It's breathtaking, so I'll shut up for a while and let the pictures do the talking!

Then we trudged to the nearest Metro, being too stingy to take a cab back to our digs even though we were completely exhausted and it was about 10.45. We were apprehensive about travelling on the Metro late at night but it was crowded with civilized Parisians of all shapes and sizes (though they're mostly thin). A young man helped us a lot, taking great pains to explain to us which line to take (we were far from home), letting us onto the platform when we found the ticket machines were out of order and saying "you're welcome" when we said "Merci beaucoup". I think that from now on, when people tell me the French are arrogant and rude, I'll challenge them to a duel. We've found Parisians to be charming, courteous, friendly and helpful.

Musée d'Orsay and the Petit and Grand Palais

We caught the Metro from Cadet to the Louvre station and walked to the Orsay via the Tuileries and the Pont de Solférino, where lovers affirm their devotion by attaching little padlocks, inscribed with romantic inscriptions, onto the bridge's railings:

The Musée d'Orsay is a converted railway station and another hugely impressive structure, on the left bank of the Seine, more or less opposite the Louvre:

The queues weren't as bad as the Louvre's but still fairly substantial:

The Orsay has some staggering artworks and if you're into Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, it's a must-see - eyeball pleasers everywhere. Just after the entrance you're met with some gorgeous Manets and the breathtaking Le Moulin de la Galette by Renoir. After all the dark drama and academicism of many of the Louvre's masterpieces, the joie de vivre and saturated colours of these mainly Parisian artists is a breath of fresh air:

No reproductions can capture the sheer lushness and beauty of those colours. There are many wonderful Degas paintings and pastels and some superb Van Goghs and Gauguins. The highlights for us were the two Manet masterpieces, Olympia and one of my all-time faves, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe:

Once again, no reproduction can fully capture the beauty of those colours. And Manet's brushstrokes are sui generis. He inspired the Impressionists, who begged him to join them, which he always politely refused. Renoir, Degas and Pissarro have their lovely dabs, and Van Gogh has his emotional swirls and thickly-applied paint, but you can't match Manet's wrist-action. You have to get up close to appreciate these techniques and, fortunately, I was able to do this with all the paintings, leaning in with glasses affixed and peering intently for ages.
The interior of the building is fantastic and, like the art it contains, full of light and space, unlike the labyrinthine Louvre.
We decided to explore the surrounding areas, once again via the Tuileries - where we saw this young woman sunning herself

- and the Champs-Élysées, until we came across the Petit-Palais and Grand-Palais. There's nothing petit about the former: it's a huge building which looks older in style than its 110 years:

It houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Paris, admission is free and there are some amazing paintings inside, including Courbet's Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine. It has a lovely, contemplative-inducing courtyard:

Let's face it, Parisians are spoiled rotten!
We crossed over to the Grand Palais, which, as its name implies, is even bigger than the Petit, but it was closed. There are gigantic bronze horses and riders on the roof:

We came across a rather snobby fellow:

Had we finally encountered the archetypal obnoxious Frenchman we've heard so much about but not yet experienced? Or was he just reacting to an unpleasant smell that had yet to reach our nostrils? We weren't sure, but the neighbourhood kids seemed charming enough:

Another long walk back to the Metro and the 9th arrondissement. I calculate we've logged around 40 ks on foot so far.
Tomorrow, dinner on the Eiffel Tower and a cruise on the Seine. If we fall in, we'll both be insane!

The Metro, the Louvre, Notre Dame et tout le reste

We decided to try the Metro today, rather than walking down to the Louvre. There's a station just a few metres from our hotel (our hotel is the Opera Cadet in Rue Cadet, the station is Cadet). We just missed one train and the next one came about 10 seconds later!
We felt a bit smug as we used our Paris museum passes to get inside, bypassing the lengthy queues outside the glass pyramid.

The Louvre is unnervingly huge and maze-like and very crowded but the section we started to explore first (the Richelieu Wing) was quite serene. There were huge bronze and marble statues everywhere:

We realized we were near the Mona Lisa as hordes of frenzied tourists, armed with video cameras, DSLRs, compacts and iPhones came charging up the stairs by way of the Winged Victory of Samothrace and onto La Joconde, as the French call her:

The room where LJ is situated also contains the enormous (almost 10 x 7 metres) The Wedding at Canaan by Veronese but most eyes are on Mona. She's encased in bullet-proof glass now, with a cordon around the wall she's hanging on and the hordes crush in and snap away, flashes blazing. It's almost a disgusting spectacle and the crowds have probably got a lot worse since that stupid book so we almost decided to give her a miss. And yet, when you do see her, you're transfixed - she's got you immediately! You get chills. I've heard people express disappointment that it's not a large painting but it's life-size, and if it wasn't, the effect would be less moving. It's like she's established some strange and immediate rapport with you. Of course the eyes follow you around the room - most portraits' eyes do if that's what the artist has intended - but her eyes... You can see why she's transfixed all who's gazed upon her for the last 500 years.

While the crowds are unnerving you can still find yourself staring at a Raphael or a Titian up close with few people around you, something you'd never be able to do if paintings of this calibre came on tour to an Australian gallery. There are just so many works of art here. The French 19th century painting collection is staggering, with gigantic Delacroixs everywhere and the even bigger Raft of the Medusa by Géricault. I didn't realize how big Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus is:

We had to leave eventually so we made our way along the Seine to Notre Dame. It's free entry and once you're inside, you can't help thinking how such an imposing building, with its beautiful interior, affected the average Parisian worshiper 800 years ago!

The flying buttresses and gargoyles are fantastic too and there's a sculpture of St Denis, patron saint of Paris, holding his head in his hands, literally!

People feed the sparrows outside ND and the birds are very tame:

We walked back "home" past the Pompidou Centre and its adjoining play area:

via a beautiful and happening street called Rue des Petit Carreux, lined with bistros, restaurants and the usual assortment of Parisian food shops where we saw these pigs in a patisserie:

Tomorrow, the Musée d'Orsay.

We were flâneurs all day today

Charles Baudelaire defined a flâneur as "a person who walks the city in order to experience it", which is exactly what we did today, though we only scratched the surface of this amazing city. We left our hotel after a splendid breakfast of croissants, bread and corn flakes and headed down Rue Lafayette, past the Opéra Garnier and towards where we thought the Louvre probably was.
We took lots of photos of the sculptures adorning the opera:

Then we spotted a large green column sprouting above the surrounding streets and headed straight for it. It was the Place Vendôme, a large square where the haute monde of Paris and the rest of the world live and stay. Its buildings include the Ritz hotel, where we intend to stay next time we're in Paris (ha ha).

I took a photo of Net outside Tiffany's - OK, it's an American company but it typifies the opulence of this area.

No sooner had we recovered from the wonders of the Place Vendôme than we were greeted by the sight of the Jardin des Tuileries, the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower in the distance!

Net visited Germany over two decades ago and I've never been to Europe so the sight of all these eyeball-pleasing sites almost stupefied us. We admired the fountains with Neptune and other mythical figures and then walked toward the Champs-Élysées and then across the Seine - where Net was accosted by a young lady trying to involve her in some sort of scam involving a gold ring she'd just "found" on the bridge (just say "non").

And so we flâneured along the banks of the Seine, this time on the Left Bank and walked past the magnificent Musée d'Orsay, which used to be a railway station and back towards the Louvre. The old palace is staggeringly imposing and huge.

There were tourists everywhere, snapping away like us, plus numerous hawkers, almost all of them African, selling miniature Eiffel Towers, little artificial flying birds, drawings and paintings of Parisian landmarks and divers other things. Net was worried that the hawkers might prove to be insistent but they behaved themselves quite well (I've been to Bali so these touts were pussycats as far as I was concerned!) In the gardens near the Louvre there are mazes and numerous sculptures, including many by Aristide Maillol:

There was a semi-naked guy doing a workout using plastic drink bottles as weights right next to one of Maillol's most famous works:

We lunched at a cafe (or was it a brasserie? It wasn't a bistro or a restaurant) near the Louvre and once again were impressed with the charm and civility of French waitresses. When are we going to be confronted with the stereotypical rude Frenchman? Maybe the men are all rude and the women the opposite but I doubt it - a man engaged us in conversation outside the museum near our hotel and he was polite and charming and very tolerant of my terrible schoolboy French when I asked him what a Franc-Maçonnerie was (I think the Maçonnerie bit is to do with Freemasonry). He spoke as much English as I do French but it was a marvellously civil exchange. We've found the French generally to be very polite and somewhat formal, which is rather nice. They believe in manners, it seems. (We've been in the country two days and already we're experts!)
WE then trudged back home, exhausted again after many kilometres of flâneuring, only to venture out an hour or so later for dinner, which we had in a small and crowded cafe in Montmartre.
Tomorrow, the Louvre on the inside!