Museums

Most visitors to Paris would have skip the Louvre. But George and Janell had been there once before and we had been warned about big crowds and long lines in June.

We started our art tour in Tuileries park. That's where the statue of the chunky lady at the top of the blog was taken. The garden connects the Louvre with the Orangerie museum where we saw two rooms that house Monet's giant paintings of his lily ponds in two large oval rooms.

The museum has works by Cézanne, Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, and Renoir but we were struck by the paintings by an artist we had never heard of: Chaim Soutine, a Jewish painter from Belarus.

The Orsay museum lives up to its top rating on Trip Advisor. There was a special exhibition on Degas and the Nude that included sketches and paintings. The rooms are large and bright and well-connected with a wide variety of items including sculpture, oils and photography. I found a photo taken near Atlanta during the Civil War. Janell found a new friend.

As good as the Orsay was, we probably enjoyed more our visit to the Rodin Museum. Not so much the smallish gallery that held his marble pieces but rather the large and peaceful garden where you could see pieces like The Thinker, Balzac, and the Gates Of Hell up close and in the sunlight.

My favorites: Ugolino and his Sons, which is featured in the center of a fountain, and The Burghers of Calais, another large sculpture, also  with a chilling story behind it.

   

After Rodin, we walked to the sprawling Les Invalides nearby. It houses centuries of armaments, from medieval pikes and helmets to ornately-carved muskets and pistols. It's also the home of Napoleon's tomb, a giant marble sarcophagus that contains the emperor's ashes.