Thursday,
Had another good brekky and then packed our bags and left them in the luggage room as we’re heading back to Holland tonight and will come back for the bags before catching the train. We headed back to the Metro and Les Arts Decoratifs museum but it didn’t open till later so walked over the river to the Museum D’Orsay.
Spent a couple of hours there looking at a fine collection of pre-impressionist, impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. I especially liked the Art Nouveau section which had some really nice furniture in it. This is another museum with a range of artistic styles and forms to look at. You should really just pick one or two (at the most museums per day and take you time to read up on what’s there and then read the interpretation that comes with the art work. Not a lot of English in the older exhibitions but generally it’s done well. Lashed out for a coffee and cake in the cheap cafe (where it’s semi self-serve) before checking out the last bits worth looking at.
Back to the Les Arts Decoratifs and another eclectic sort of collection from the medieval/middle ages, to the renaissance, to the 17th-18th centuries, to modern furniture, art deco and toys! The museum card is very handy except we did pay a few €s to get Reubs in to see a special exhibition of the designer Joe Columbo. Another hour and a half spent hear and the hunger pangs had set in.
We walked into the gardens between this and the Louvre and had some lunch under the trees (sheltering from a passing shower) before heading via the Metro to the Hotel Invalides with all these bushes trimmed into cones and heaps of old cannon from far off lands.
Then across the road and around the corner to the Rodin museum and some more amazing art work. Fantastic to see the sculptures coming out of the raw material. Chunks of marble with perfect figures/hands etc. appearing from under the sculpture’s chisel. There was a good display on how the bronze casting is done and (while I still don’t understand it exactly) it looks like a lot of work - like too much work! Beautiful things to look at in the gardens and inside, with some marble carvings being so delicate you can see the light through them. Caught another metro to St. Germain and wandered around till we found the cafe Le Duex Magots which has been made famous by Hemingway, Satre and De Beauvoir and others. Due to its fame it’s charging €6 for a coffee which is $9 a bit steep for me when you’ll have to fork out even more for a bit of something to go with it. We checked out the cathedral across the road which had some very old stained glass and these amazing (holy?) water bowls made out of guilt edged clam shells.
Thought we’d wander the back alleys for a coffee shop/bar and found a beauty, just like Le Duex Magots would have been 50 years ago! A few locals sitting at the bar having a coffee and chatting to the lady behind the bar and an old fellow having what may have been his third glass of wine. A few other people around including a few guys playing chess at a small table in the window (with the stop clocks and all!). We found a nice corner spot and sat down only to hear a couple of girls carrying on in American. So, we spoke to each to drown them out... The lady made us four coffees and an expresso ad brought them over to our table in five cups and two jugs of hot/steamed milk. We could make our own lattes to tatste! Excellent coffee and only €2:30 ea! (the expresso is always cheaper on the account of no milk). A great experience and just what we needed to get a feel of authentic French cafe life. So much different to sitting on the street watching the traffic lights change.
Reuben then headed off to find some of the fashion houses back towards the Pompidou and we wandered around and bumped into the church St. Sulpice which was huge (but undergoing serious renovations) and then through the Jardin de Luxemurg. A very nice park with lots of chairs that you can move around, some art works to play with , fountains and some gendarmes keeping an eye on things. Also poked our noses into an exhibition that featured some art by a guy who uses old tea bags. They looked aesthetically pleasing from a distance but up close the magic is goes and they’re just old tea bags stuck to a canvas. But, there may be a message in that... Then we had to race off to Gare du Noord station to make sure we rendezvoused with Reuben. Reubs wasn’t there so Wendy stayed and Ash raced off to the supermarket while matt and I went and picked the bags up. Got back a bit hot and bothered and Reuben had turned up so we hopped on with 10 minutes to spare. Met three girls from Georgia on the train who had seen us on the train to Paris (but they’d only had one day in Paris and a day in Brussels). They remembered Reuben’s faux leopard skin jacket...
We got off the train at Rotterdam around 10 and caught the connection on to Leiden where Jane and Geerlof kindly picked us up around 11.
Had another good brekky and then packed our bags and left them in the luggage room as we’re heading back to Holland tonight and will come back for the bags before catching the train. We headed back to the Metro and Les Arts Decoratifs museum but it didn’t open till later so walked over the river to the Museum D’Orsay.
Spent a couple of hours there looking at a fine collection of pre-impressionist, impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. I especially liked the Art Nouveau section which had some really nice furniture in it. This is another museum with a range of artistic styles and forms to look at. You should really just pick one or two (at the most museums per day and take you time to read up on what’s there and then read the interpretation that comes with the art work. Not a lot of English in the older exhibitions but generally it’s done well. Lashed out for a coffee and cake in the cheap cafe (where it’s semi self-serve) before checking out the last bits worth looking at.
Back to the Les Arts Decoratifs and another eclectic sort of collection from the medieval/middle ages, to the renaissance, to the 17th-18th centuries, to modern furniture, art deco and toys! The museum card is very handy except we did pay a few €s to get Reubs in to see a special exhibition of the designer Joe Columbo. Another hour and a half spent hear and the hunger pangs had set in.
We walked into the gardens between this and the Louvre and had some lunch under the trees (sheltering from a passing shower) before heading via the Metro to the Hotel Invalides with all these bushes trimmed into cones and heaps of old cannon from far off lands.
Then across the road and around the corner to the Rodin museum and some more amazing art work. Fantastic to see the sculptures coming out of the raw material. Chunks of marble with perfect figures/hands etc. appearing from under the sculpture’s chisel. There was a good display on how the bronze casting is done and (while I still don’t understand it exactly) it looks like a lot of work - like too much work! Beautiful things to look at in the gardens and inside, with some marble carvings being so delicate you can see the light through them. Caught another metro to St. Germain and wandered around till we found the cafe Le Duex Magots which has been made famous by Hemingway, Satre and De Beauvoir and others. Due to its fame it’s charging €6 for a coffee which is $9 a bit steep for me when you’ll have to fork out even more for a bit of something to go with it. We checked out the cathedral across the road which had some very old stained glass and these amazing (holy?) water bowls made out of guilt edged clam shells.
Thought we’d wander the back alleys for a coffee shop/bar and found a beauty, just like Le Duex Magots would have been 50 years ago! A few locals sitting at the bar having a coffee and chatting to the lady behind the bar and an old fellow having what may have been his third glass of wine. A few other people around including a few guys playing chess at a small table in the window (with the stop clocks and all!). We found a nice corner spot and sat down only to hear a couple of girls carrying on in American. So, we spoke to each to drown them out... The lady made us four coffees and an expresso ad brought them over to our table in five cups and two jugs of hot/steamed milk. We could make our own lattes to tatste! Excellent coffee and only €2:30 ea! (the expresso is always cheaper on the account of no milk). A great experience and just what we needed to get a feel of authentic French cafe life. So much different to sitting on the street watching the traffic lights change.
Reuben then headed off to find some of the fashion houses back towards the Pompidou and we wandered around and bumped into the church St. Sulpice which was huge (but undergoing serious renovations) and then through the Jardin de Luxemurg. A very nice park with lots of chairs that you can move around, some art works to play with , fountains and some gendarmes keeping an eye on things. Also poked our noses into an exhibition that featured some art by a guy who uses old tea bags. They looked aesthetically pleasing from a distance but up close the magic is goes and they’re just old tea bags stuck to a canvas. But, there may be a message in that... Then we had to race off to Gare du Noord station to make sure we rendezvoused with Reuben. Reubs wasn’t there so Wendy stayed and Ash raced off to the supermarket while matt and I went and picked the bags up. Got back a bit hot and bothered and Reuben had turned up so we hopped on with 10 minutes to spare. Met three girls from Georgia on the train who had seen us on the train to Paris (but they’d only had one day in Paris and a day in Brussels). They remembered Reuben’s faux leopard skin jacket...
We got off the train at Rotterdam around 10 and caught the connection on to Leiden where Jane and Geerlof kindly picked us up around 11.
No comments:
Post a Comment