With so many of the streets of Paris blocked off because of the Tour d’France, just walking from one spot to another took quite some time. We only had time for one museum, and I had to make a choice. Either the Louvre, where I wanted to at least see the Mona Lisa, or the Musee d’Orsay, where I wanted to see all the wonderful Impressionist paintings. I opted for the latter, excited about seeing works by Van Gogh and Renoir, Manet and Monet, Gauguin and Cezanne, Degas and the praying peasants by Millet. My mother had a reproduction of the praying peasants hanging in her bedroom at one time, and it’s come to mind a couple of times as I’ve been writing this current book of French peasants. I even saw Whistler’s Mother. Who knew that painting was so large? Actually Neil headed off to the Notre Dame of Paris to take pictures and I ventured into the halls of the Masters by myself. It was quite a day!
Neil had the camera and took pictures of Notre Dame. Not that I could have taken any shots inside the Musee d’Orsay anyway! (They don’t allow that.)
We reconnected just in time to wait for the racers to pass not far from there. What we thought would be a fifteen minute wait under the heat of the day turned out to be nearly an hour and half wait—for those few moments as the racers went by. But Neil got some pictures and so we went home happy.
As we walked toward what we hoped would be the best route to the Metro station, one of those moments occurred again. We knew we had limited time to catch the train we wanted (before dark) and Neil mentioned he wasn’t sure this was the fastest route. He’d no sooner said that than we literally looked up and there, right in front of us, was another Tourist station. So we went in to ask directions, and they spoke excellent English. We found out the best Metro station for us was right across the street—so my husband had been headed in the right direction after all. I knew I could trust him. 😉
We ended our day in Paris knowing our research trip was coming to an end. We had only one research day left, and that would be back in Brussels where we’d catch an early plane out the day after that.
Join Me!