#rndtheworldn44 - Day 39 - Hello, Paris!

We arrived in Paris on December 29 - more than 18 years after we brought Katie and Matt, as high-schoolers, to visit the City of Lights in a "There's a Great Big World Out There" trip.  When we were planning the Burma trip, we needed to find a location west of Myanmar to stop on our flight back to the U.S., and it seemed natural to pick Paris for a few-day stop.  Two thoughts followed this:  first, "What fun to celebrate New Year's Eve in Paris!"; quickly followed by, "I think it's going to be mighty cold in Paris at New Year's."  Never once did the thought occur to us that Paris for the holidays is an immensely popular destination.  We think we shared Paris with half of Europe and quite a few from the U.S.A., and we were lucky we made early hotel reservations.

So much for planning.  Now the thing itself.  Our flight from Bangkok arrived at 7:30 am and, once in town with our bags checked at the Hotel Left Bank, we had hours to kill before we could check into our room.  So what was more natural than to hunt down a cafe for a croissant and cafe creme?

It warmed us up as we pulled out our street map and planning material to decide what to do that day.  Weather and holiday museum closings were going to play a big role in our decision-making, because most of our days would be rainy and all would be cold - and New Year's would provoke museum closings in addition to the customary one-day-a-week for many of them.

We decided that, since it was early morning, we would start with the Louvre and try to avoid long lines.  So here we were, crossing the Seine for the first time this visit, on the Pont Neuf:

Even by this time, we hadn't realized how crowded the museums would be due to holiday visitors.  It wasn't until we got to the Louvre's entrance, only to discover 2.5-hour waits, even at 9:30 am, that we realized this whole museums-for-New Years thing could be our undoing.  We both agreed it would not do to stand in the freezing rain for 2.5 hours, so we quickly regrouped. We finally decided that Musee de l'Orangerie would be our first stop.  It would be a short walk from the Louvre in the cold rain, and it houses one of the most impressive collections of Impressionist art there are.  Besides, we both really like Impressionist art.

We learned of a museum pass which, though it cost about $90 each, would give us unlimited museum entrances, PLUS (and most importantly) no need to wait in line for tickets - just a very short line for ticketholders.  Sold!  So when we arrived at Musee de l'Orangerie (which, not unimportantly, did not yet have a long line), we bought our museum passes and we were good to go to skip the museum lines for the rest of our stay.

We weren't disappointed in Musee de l'Orangerie.  While it is small, it has a breathtaking collection.  One entire floor is devoted to a grand, two-room oil-painting mural that surrounds you with a water lily pond.  It is part of a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict Monet's flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life.  Before he died, Monet gifted the multi-room mural to the City of Paris and specified how he wanted it presented.  This photo does no justice to the color and expanse of the mural painting, but at least it gives you a hint of its beauty:

It's impossible to share all of the beautiful artworks we enjoyed, but here are a few from Musee de l'Orangerie.  This is "Bouquet," by Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).  He was known to brag about his wife, who took care of his art supplies, kept their home, and supplied him with endless flower bouquets from their garden:  "When my wife has arranged a bouquet, all I have to do is paint it."

The collection even housed a Picasso (1881-1973), "Large Nude with Drapery", painted in the 1920's during his Neo-Classical Period:

David will be quick to say that Picasso is his all-time favorite painter, and he was already lobbying Kathy hard to stop at each museum in Paris that might have any significant collection of Picasso's works.  But that is for a later day.

For now, we enjoyed the work of many other artists, including this one, "Harlequin and Pierrot," painted in 1924 by Andre Derain (1880-1954):

By the time we finished our visit to Musee de l'Orangerie, the rain had stopped, and we had a chance to stroll the Tuilleries Garden along the Seine as we headed out for lunch at a nearby cafe:

We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon walking, and made our way back to the Left Bank over the Pont Leopold Sedar-Senghor and through the neighborhoods to Boulevard Saint-Germain --

-- where, on our way back our hotel, we encountered L'Eglise de Saint-Germain des Pres, resplendent with a makeshift Christmas village at its feet:

This little village contained vendors of seasonal food and drink, as well as interesting holiday crafts.  The nearest one in this photo advertised "Hot Red Wine," which, at this point in our outing sounded mighty tasty.  We had to stop.

It was indeed spiced, hot mulled wine, and it warmed us up all the way back to our hotel!  Sante!

When we returned to the hotel and had a chance to look closely at it, we realized that this was the very hotel we had stayed in with Matt and Katie in our original Paris visit!  Only, this time, we had a room with a beautiful view of Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, and all the comings and goings and hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

This promised to be a very pleasant time in Paris, indeed, despite the crowds and the cold and the rain.  We couldn't wait to decide on our next day's adventure.