Paris: The Birthday Trip - Day 9 (part 2)

We left Père-Lachaise and made our way, via the Metro, to the Tuileries for coffee. This is a wonderful place to sit and have a coffee and we were a bit sad that in a couple of days we would be so far away from it. Nevertheless, we managed to enjoy ourselves - how could we not? When we finished our coffee we walked through the gardens to the Musée de l'Orangerie (situated nearby on the south side of the the Tuileries and near the Place de la Concorde).

Foam dense enough to support sugar cubes or small animals.

The 'Water Lilies' canvases are beautifully displayed in a large, well-lit oval room with a line of benches in the middle for those who wish to sit quietly and contemplate the paintings. And well you might: Aside from their beauty, the technical aspects of the paintings are astonishing to anyone who, like us, has seen these paintings only in reproductions. The complex, subtle, delicate layering of colours and brush strokes simply can't be reproduced mechanically. If you ever get the chance to see the paintings you will see that this isn't just art-speak.

The room never became too crowded for comfortable viewing as the museum limited the number of people admitted at any one time. Very smart decision.

Unfortunately, photographing the Water Lilies is not permitted, but that isn't the case in the rest of the museum and there is much more to the l'Orangerie than the Nymphéas. Paintings by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Sisley, Chaim Soutine, and Maurice Utrillo, among others (such as Andre Derain, two of whose paintings can be seen at the top of this page) are also on display. It's quite the experience to walk down a flight of stairs and find a long row of Renoirs displayed almost casually.

Place Vendôme and column.

Column base. The column is no longer open to the public.

Advertising tends to be a little more high-end in this part of town.

Westin Hotel entrance.

Reading the menu in the Tuileries. So much to choose from.

From the Orangerie we moved on to Place Vendôme, home of the Hotel Ritz Paris and the famous column, modelled after Trajan's Column, erected by Napoleon. The photo above of the Westin Hotel entrance gives some idea of the standard demanded by this upscale environment. I took that photo to compare with our local Westin Hotel (yes, much laughter involved).

.....

You don't really mind exhausting yourself in an environment like Paris but there comes a point where you simply have to face the fact that you just can't carry on. This is when your hotel room, your accumulated snacks, and your bed become the only remaining sites you want to see that day. And so that's where we went.

NOTE: At this point, as we collapsed back in our hotel room, I was unaware of the 'little' surprise Denise had planned for the next day - a place she was determined we would see before we left Paris.

Next: Days 10 and 11.