And now, back to France (I wish)

THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2012

We were supposed to go to Versailles on this day, but we got moving way too slow in the morning, so we rearranged some of our plans.
We got off the subway and walked across the Pont Alexandre III.  On the way we saw the Grand and Petit Palais.

Grand Palais, looking across Pont Alexandre III with Dome Church in the background

Front of the Grand Palais

Grand Palais

Petit Palais

Pont Alexandre III

Pont Alexandre III

Our first stop was Invalides, and the Musee de l'Armee.  We weren't really interested in the museum, but had to pay the admission to be able to go into the Dome Chutch.

Musee de l'Armee and Dome Church

There was a pretty chapel (The Chapel of Saint Louis des Invalides) in the Musee de l'Armee (it is actually pictured just below and slightly to the left of the dome in the picture above) that backed right up onto Dome Church.  You can see the inside of the Dome Church through that glass window at the end of the chapel.

The Dome Church is the burial place of Napoleon Bonaparte.  His ashes lie encased in 6 caskets under the dome.

Looking down onto Napoleon's burial place.  It was really big.  See the comparative size of the people in the background

Looking up at the dome.  Zack got really good at self-portraits this trip

Napoleon's casket looking up toward the altarpiece.  That's the glass window I mentioned in the other chapel.

Very beautiful

There were some pretty gardens outside the church that we enjoyed walking around.

Then we hopped across the street to the Rodin Museum.  We weren't sure we should even make the time for this in our Paris trip since Philadelphia has the best collection of Rodin's work outside of France, but we were glad we did.  Rodin lived in and worked out of this house for a long time.  He personally selected it as the site where his works would be displayed after his death.

Many of Rodin's sculptures are displayed out in the gardens.

The Thinker

The Gates of Hell

View of the dome church from the Rodin gardens

This is one of the museums where they won't let you bring a stroller inside. Baby didn't mind.  She just snoozed through the whole thing.

Lunch!
I'm not sure why Jean Paul Gaultier is designing Coke cans, but there you go.

Mmmm

Our next destination was the Musee d'Orsay.  On our walk there, we saw the National Assembly, the French legislature.

We just happened upon this church, St. Clotilde, which turned out to be quite pretty.

The Musee d'Orsay is housed in a former railway station.  It picks up where the Louvre leaves off chronologically, sometime around 1850 I think.  The best part about the museum was the collection of impressionist works.  There were Monets, Manets (hee hee), Van Goghs, Renoirs, Cezannes... it was really quite the collection.  There was also a collection of decorative arts and a number of sculptures.  The Orsay does not allow photos of its collections at this time, so we just got a few photos there.

breast feeding at the Orsay

It's hard to tell, but you could see out this clock and it had a very nice view of the city

There was an outdoor terrace.  You can see the Sacre Coeur on the top of the hill on the left and the Louvre on the right.

A very cool building

We did enjoy this museum very much, but I still liked the Louvre best.  I think lots of people really enjoy the smaller, more manageable collections of some of the other museums, and I can see why, but the Louvre was just amazing.
We polished off our day with a few pastries...

all of which were delicious.  My favorite here was either the eclair (which was filled with chocolate...mmmm), or that one that looks like 2 cream puffs stacked on top of each other.  I can't think of what it's called right now, but I remember Sam telling us that it means "nun" in French.