Today was a perfect weather day – quite lovely, warm, a little breeze. Just the day to get an early-ish start, which we did and started with the Musee Maillot. We had been to this private museum before for a showing of Toulouse Lautrec drawings and paintings a few years ago. The museum is itself a lovely building restored in sandstone that just glows. It had been the gallery of the muse of the artist Maillot, a friend of the really greats like Picasso and Matisse. Many of their drawings and small paintings are in the museum. What attracted us this time was a temporary showing of photographs by WeeGee, an American photographer in the late 30s to the early 60s, known for his pictures of a gritty New York City. He was a working photographer, not an “artiste”, so his photos show dead bodies, mob bosses and cars being dredged from rivers. But it was an interesting exhibit, with a movie produced by the museum as well. And surprisingly, we took well over 2 hours for the small museum. So that left us at – you guessed it – lunch time.
But no rest for the weary today. We limited ourselves to ham sandwiches on baguettes, and off we went to the second stop on our tour – an exhibition about Vauban, an architect of fortifications for Louis XIV. Surprisingly for us, they featured 6 fortifications in the exhibit – and we have been to three of them. (Perhaps that is why we were interested.)
We had hoped to get into the Musee D’Orsay as part of the Patrimoine, but by the time we got there, the line was long and thick. We decided we would rather spend the money to see the museum on Tuesday rather than wait in the hot sun with that crowd – especially knowing it would be just as crowded inside. So we decided to see if the Pompidou Museum was giving any freebies as part of the Patrimoine. We are not fans of modern art, and have never been in the Pompidou, which always seems to us to be rather pricey. So free would make it worth the price of admission for us. What we found when we arrived at 5 is that if you were among the first 25 people to enter between 2:30 and 4 you would have gotten into the main exhibit free. We wandered around a bit, and visited the free Brancusi Atelier (studio) that has been recreated as he left it when he died, and called it a day.
As we were waiting for our metro train we fell into conversation with two fellows from Canada who were looking in their guidebook trying to find a restaurant they could get into in their cutoffs. We chatted a bit, and waved as we got into the train. Several stops later the train stopped and told us all to get off, so we resumed our conversation. Turned out that the train line had been stopped for a fire, and an official gave each of us directions to complete our trips. So we had another half hour of chatting as we went train to train before we finally parted ways. Tom and I took a total of 5 trains and over an hour to get back to the apartment. Happily, though, we had remembered before we left that the stores would be closed by the time we returned, so we had already gotten a few supplies and so we settled in for a quiet dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment