Dem bones, Dem bones...
Trip Start
Apr 12, 2008
1
54
Trip End
Jun 18, 2008
Paris, France
Thursday, June 5, 2008
- Musee D'Orsay
- Catacombs
- Champs Elysees
- Latin Quarter
<Lang's Extended Version>
After yesterday's big day, we decided to take it a bit easier today by visiting one of the other galleries Paris was famous for - the Musee D'Orsay. The masterpieces of this gallery were the impressionist works done by Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh, not to mention the building itself, which was a former railway station.
We arrived at the museum at around 10.30am, thinking that we would have to wait quite a while in queue since we didn't have a Paris Museum Pass that would have allowed us to skip the line (they didn't sell single day ones, so there was no point for us to get one), but to our surprise, there wasn't a line at all, so we walked straight in.. After paying, of course!
Once again, Rick came to our rescue with his audio guide and pointed out the main attractions of this gallery. Brian in particular liked the "Birth of Venus" painting by Cabanel. I mean, who wouldn't with the erotic ivory smooth skinned Venus lying naked in the waves of the ocean?? Even I was compelled to give it a nice long look.. =P
I found the Musee d'Orsay much more 'user friendly' and manageable compared to the Lourve. The paintings and sculptures were spread out at a reasonable distance and I guess it wasn't as crowded.
The more I saw the different impressionists works, the more I liked them, surprisingly enough.. In fact, I actually found Van Gogh's works quite interesting and was kinda regretting not going to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.. Oh well, there's always next time..
The other thing I've noticed now that I've visited so many galleries and museums is that I can recognise certain painting styles as well as self-portraits done by the more famous artists.. It certainly has made me appreciate art a lot more, but that wouldn't have been difficult as I don't think I've stepped foot into an art gallery since I was in primary school.. Funny that.. What makes someone come across the other side of the world to pay money to see paintings and sculptures? What's even more ironic is that Adelaide is the so called 'City of Churches', and I haven't even set foot inside (or out on the steps for that matter) of St. Peter's Church in North Adelaide!
Anyway, after approximately 3 hours admiring the works, we decided we had had enough - or at least our stomachs thought so! We stopped for a quick baguette lunch at a café nearby and then we headed off again, this time to something a little different - the catacombs..
Underneath the city streets of Paris houses the bones of almost 6 million former citizens. Basically in the late 17th century, the church cemeteries were severely overcrowded and the government wanted to reclaim some of the land, so they had to find a place to bury their dead elsewhere. The government decided to rearrange and relocate the remains to the unused underground limestone quarries that use to be on the outskirts of Paris (of course this is now in the heart of the city), and after several decades, the move was complete.
So after finding the simple easy-to-miss entrance and paying our fee, we descended the narrow spiral staircase 20m below ground. This led us to a small gallery of photographs and information, before we had to walk down the dark narrow tunnels.
After approximately 15 minutes, we were confronted with literally millions of bones, stacked neatly against the wall, roughly 1.5m high. Skulls of the deceased were intertwined and lined in a decorative pattern with all the other bones. The 1.6km of tunnel that was open to the public was only a very small proportion of the entire catacomb network, but that was probably enough. It was fascinating yet eerie..
Flash photography was not allow out of respect for the departed, so I did the best I could with the limited light, pillars and the like around. However, one guy had no qualms about touching the bones at all as we saw him place his camera on top of one of the skulls and leant across to set up his shot on the bones.. We were quite shocked and somewhat bemused at the same time.. What was even more interesting was that as we were leaving, there is a guard at the exit checking bags.. Apparently some people do try to take home a souvenir or two!
As we were walking back to the metro station, I spotted a crepe stand, so we decided to fill up on this delectable dessert. The last and only one we had while in Paris was near the Notre Dam and they just reheated pre-made crepes, so I was kinda disappointed with that. However, this one made them fresh and the owner was really quite friendly.. I had a nutella crepe and Brian had one with nutella and banana. The owner put a whole banana in! It was delicious, especially the crispy edges.. mmm..
We eventually made it back to the Champs Elysees, as the main reason for this was that I wanted a t-shirt from the Disney store, but didn't see the same one for sale at the park yesterday.. Well, I got my shirt and we also ended up at the original Louis Vitton Store to check out the bags and things for sale there.. You had to go, right? Well, lucky for Brian, we didn't end up buying anything.. Although later on, he did say he wouldn't have cared if I did.. yeah, I bet it'll be a different story if I did have one around my arms! Haha..
So from one side of town to the other, we headed to the Latin Quarter next in the hopes that I'd be able to find some street artists and buy that original painting of the Eiffel Tower or such.. Unfortunately, it appeared to be in vain as all the little stalls by the River Seine were closed and all that was open were restaurants. Oh well, we slowly made our way back on foot to the Lourve.
As tonight was our last night in Paris, we also had our last dinner with Gruncle. He was to take us to a French restaurant, but unfortunately it was booked out, so yet again, we had Chinese.. No, it wasn't as good as home and not really what we wanted!!
