The Rodin Museum has a wonderful garden full of sculptures, including The Thinker. I had a quiet walk through and did a little sketch of a statue in the middle of a pond. I totally forgot about my sketchbook! Crap. Oh well, I did get two sketches in.
After the museum, I ventured into Hotel Invalides as it is right across the street. It is not somewhere I was going to see, but I was there, so why not. I'm glad I did. The place is massive and has the tomb Napoleon is in. Boy did that dude have a bad case of short-mans syndrome. Everything he did was over-the-top. The tomb would fit at least 50 clowns.
I then ventured into the army museum there. I believe it's the biggest in the world (don't quote me on that). The French keep everything. They have thousands of pieces of armor from medieval times alone! And the amount of artillery, swords, crossbows canons and horse armor is impressive.
I would highly recommend seeing this place if you are in Paris. It is beautifully laid out and they have demonstration areas where you can put on the armor to see how it feels.
Another cool thing they have is full depictions of most of their war battles. They have these huge screens that animate a battle and you listen and watch as they show you on maps how the battle was won or lost. I listened to the Battle of Waterloo completely.
What a contradiction though. In London, they have so many monuments and are so proud of defeating Napoleon. And in Paris, they are so proud of Napoleon and his accomplishments. It's interesting to hear both sides. It makes me want to learn much more about this crazy little man.
Afterwards I walked over to the Musee d'Orsay. Ok, this is my favorite museum ever! The amount of impressionism and post-impressionism is, in a word, impressive. The one piece that absolutely "wowed" me was van Gogh's self portrait. I bet you can see it a mile away, it's so bright with colour. The aqua colours in the painting are so bright and contrast greatly with the orange of his hair and beard. It's almost cheerful until you look at his face, which is full of pain.
I saw so many other pieces that I loved, but I will not go on and bore you with my nerdiness.
But I'm still sticking with art, I am in Paris after all. After the Orsay, I sat by a fountain in Garden Tuilleries and there was a woman beside me painting in a small book. She had her shoes off and was resting her feet on the fountain edge. She held two little metal bottles of paint while she painted. I kept looking over at her work. It was beautiful. It looked like art deco from the 40's. I finally got up the nerve to ask her if she was willing to sell. Unfortunately, she couldn't. She is making a new design for a larger piece she is working on. Her name was Rusudan Petviashvili, she's an artist from Georgia. Too bad, I would have cherished it. Wasn't meant to be. But she gave me her card and a small pamphlet of her work.
Bonsoir.
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