Tuesday morning was a late one, still fighting off jet lag. But hey, we are on vacation, so who cares what time we get up, when we eat breakfast or head out for the day?
Today's itinerary included the Musée d'Orsay and the La Tour Eiffel.
Our trips to Italy and Spain with the kids set our expectations on how much we would be walking during our visit and we put certainly that to the test on our first full day in Paris. We headed out for our 2.5km walk to the Musée d'Orsay after a nice breakfast on our terrace. Everyone that we talked to about Paris said this museum was in many ways even better than the Louvre. It did not disappoint.
Here is a bit of our walk along the Seine.
It was very crowded outside the museum, and there were heavily armed French army ranger guards with machine guns watching over the crowds. Not sure if that was due to the OBL news, or just a regular level of security at this site.
It took us a bit of time to figure out the ticket buying process and which line we should be in. We knew we could buy a multi-day museum pass at the d'Orsay, but it was not clear where we could make the purchase. We finally figured out it was through a little side door labeled le kiosk, to the left as you look at the front of the museum.
The museum pass is a good deal. It gives you access to the permanent collections at nearly 2 dozen museums (including the Louvre - but not La Tour Eiffel) and other historical attractions. In some cases, the pass will let you skip long lines of tourists. The challenge is you have to use it on consecutive days, so you have to figure out what sites you want to see and whether you can put them together in consecutive days.
The d'Orsay is housed in a former train station, from the late 1800s. The main salon is fantastic; picture Grand Central or Union Station filled with incredible sculpture. There are multiple levels of rooms with the most impressive collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art in the world -- Van Gogh, Gaugin, Monet, etc. They had a special Manet exhibit while we were there - extra cost and another line to get in, so we skipped it. But it yielded one of the funniest tourist comments I've heard, as you can see in the title of this post.
After a few hours in the d'Orsay (no pictures allowed) we wandered out to see the big tall pointy thing.
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