Paris - Musee d’Orsay

On rainy days we like to visit the museums so the next rainy day we visited the Musee d’Orsay; which is well known for its paintings, and we really liked the Impressionist collection. They had a large collection of paintings including some large collections of Cezanne, Courbet, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Vincent Van Gogh (we even saw Whistlers Mother). The Van Gogh’s, Sisley, and Monet collections were our favorites. Seeing all the paintings of Van Gogh, with the aid of the audio-guide, really allowed me to appreciate the genius of his works as well as others. Noah got a little bored with all the paintings, he liked the sculptures better and the d’Orsay didn’t have as many sculptors.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Claude Monet - Blue Water Lilies:
Vincent Van Gogh - Starry Night:

Vincent Van Gogh - The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise:

Our subway stop, waiting for the Metro, usually we had to wait less then 4 minutes for a Metro, a lot less then in Dresden. Liss and Noah on our way to the d'Orsay.

The outside of the Musee d'Oray:

The d'Orsay was once a train station, as you can see it has the shape of a typical train station. Can you find Noah and Melissa in this picture?

Back to the Tuileres, our favorite place to hang out in Paris. She looked like she wanted to hold hands.

View of the Eiffel tower in the clouds, from the Tuileres:

Paris - Latin Quarter

We spend another day exploring the Latin Quarter which is the area where our apartment was located. Sites included shops outside our apartment, Luxembourg Gardens (Jardin Du Luxembourg), Palais du Luxembourg (Senate), Sorbonne University of Paris, and the Pantheon.

Streets outside our apartment:

Walking toward the Luxumbuorg Gardens:

The Senate:

Gardens and the Senate:

Gardens:

The twin statues of happiness:
La Fontaine Medicis:

Relaxing and feeding the pigeons :

We spend a good part of the day meandering through the park and seeing the statues, gardens, buildings and park. The park had bocce ball, tennis, soccer, and playgrounds. While taking a break, I noticed through the trees what looked like the base of what could be the statue of liberty, i thought couldn't be and I was amazed when I when over to investigate and sure enough we found the first made statue of liberty, we didn't even know that this existed.

This was used as the model for the Statue of liberty in New York and the Statue of liberty on the Seine River. If you look close at the book it has 15 DE NOVEMBRE 1889, this is the date in which the larger statue (not the one in New York) on the Seine River (which we also saw) was inaugurated. This one was built in 1870 and later donated to the Luxembourg Gardens. Also they added a little oak tree right next to it with a plaque as a memorial to the victims of 911 attacks: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luxembourg911Plaque.JPG and http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Luxembourg911Monument.jpg.

Below Noah and Liberty: French playing a game of Bocce Ball (i think), it was fun to watch them.

Relaxing and feeding the pigeons :

Panthean and Sorbonne University (left):

Panthean, David, Noah, and Melissa:

Below the Panthean there are Crypts that contain the remains of a lot famous french including Marie Curie. Melissa got the chills in the Crypts and thought it was from the spirts. Must have been Marie Curie giving her some encourgement or trying to swap stories.

Foucault pendulum in the Panthean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum), demonstrated the rotation of the earth, still swinging today:

Joan of Arc series of wall murals, we see of lot of them in paris as she was a Saint/heroine of France. Here she is having a vision if you look hard you can see an angel handing here a sword. (For more on Joan of Arc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc):

In battle:

Joan at the coronation of Charles VII:

Execution by burning at the stake:

Stopping for a coffee at a Cafe:

Church near the Sorbonne (if you look closely, click on image to see a larger version, you can see the "hat" on the statue, college kids?):

Paris - Walk along the Seine river

We spent one of our days walking down the Seine River and enjoying the views and sites. Melissa and I often take long walks and have the kids trained for theses long walks. We took a metro to near the Notre Dame cathedral and followed the Seine stopping and taking detours to see the different sites; as we meandered down the river. Our route went roughly like this; Notre Dame, Memorial de la Deportation (memorial to the Holocaust), by the Palais de Justice, across the Pont Neuf bridge, down to the national assembly, down the Invalides Jardin (Napoleon’s tomb), by the Ecole Militaire, down the champ de Mars, to the Eiffel tower, then back along the Seine to the Tuileries and the Louvre for a night time view of the Eiffel tower. I am guessing this is over 6 miles. Our favorite spot in Paris was the Tuileries; which is a garden area right next to the Louvre were we liked sit in the park and relax, we found ourselves ending up there a lot (there is a nice view of the Louvre and the Eiffel tower) at night and in the afternoons.

Here are some pictures from our walk along the Seine River:

Notre Dame and David, Melissa, and Noah:
Notre Dame:

Seine River walk:

Notre Dame:

Inside Notre Dame:

More inside:

David out front:

Side view:

Picture of room inside the Memorial de la Deportation (memorial to the Holocaust). Could just look in this room:

Locations of concentration camps where people were deported to:

More in Memorial de la Deportation:

Modeling shoot we walked by:

View of the Louvre from the Seine River:

Pont Neuf (each bridge, Pont, has a name and different and usually from a different era):

Fall colours and Louvre:

Pont Alexandre III:

Invalides:

Noah in front of the Invalides moat:

Eiffel tower:

Noah helping out; taking his turn to hold up the eiffel tower:

Family (minus our college girl):

Walking up the Eiffel tower:

Noah looking down:

Walking back to the Louvre: