We metroed to the D´Orsay. we were glad to find no queue waiting for us. We walked straight through to the ticket counter and into the main hall. Above us sat the beautiful clock harking back to the building´s days as a train station. The hall was full of statues and sculptures.
At first we tried to follow the numbering of the rooms on the ground floor. The museum takes great joy in making this task as annoying as possible. We were sent left and right, back and forward, from corner to corner of the museum. After only a few rooms we gave up, moving to neary rooms instead.
I saw some of my favourite Monet and Manet works plus other impressionists. The last time I was here I had just studied many of the pieces for high school art. It made me sad that I couldn't remember the interesting little facts about each painting. I tried to recall the significance of each work in the context of the society. I tried to find the importance of the artists´ style. Only some I could remember.
I think the longer I was there the more came back to me. There piece that I remembered straight away. I remembered how much I loved them and how incredile they were. I spent some of the better rooms smiling like a school girl.
All the Monet and Manet and Renoir and Degas and Picasso and Van Gough and Whistler and Seurat and Gauguin. So much beauty.
We were hungry and already had sore feet having had only seen half the floors. There is just so much to see there, one could spend the whole day. We had other touring planned for the day so we skimmed through the rest of it. We caught some Klimts but didn't pay much attention to the rest. We had seen the best rooms anyway.
For lunch we walked a few blocks up until we found a place that we liked. Dani and I had quiche again while Josh had pasta. We all had lots of salad. Lots and lots of salad. I was missing greens. Then coffee and fancy tea in a material bag with a thin wooden spoon.
Back to the Pompadou which was open. We started in a small design shop floating on the first floor. Lovely Lomo cameras and clever design bits. Cool rulers and bags. Customised paper-clips. All the good stuff you love the look of but never buy.
We started at the top level with an exhibition called Traces de Sacre – Traces of the sacred. It was themed on the relationship between art and belief. It started with the fall of religion and disillusionment with god. Each room covered topics like Apocalypse vs world wars, Nitche´s superman vs Adam. Pagan beliefs vs surrealism, masks and chanting vs modern dance. Even new age and Allister Crawley made an appearance.
Near the end they started throwing everything in. Karowak and Ginsberg´s howl. I couldn't see quite what it had to do with the exhibition. they kind of threw lots things in there I don't think had much to do with god and belief.
The exhibition took a lot longer then we expected. We went down to the permanent modern art collection. I remembered many of the pieces. They had some Jackson Pollock in their abstract expressionism room. Also some Joseph Bouys. I liked the design rooms filled with crazy chairs and tables and inflatable furniture. Except we kept wanting to sit on them. I also love the life sized red rhino.
We were just about ready to go, but stopped into the bookshop at Dani´s request. God, that book shop. It was an infinite haven of design books, French comics and independently made notebooks. I wanted to spent a lot longer there than we did. Actually I wanted to spend more than that. So many things I wanted to buy there. I had to stop myself from carrying a pile of things to the cash register. I could have stayed there for another half hour swooning over books, I think Dani could have too. But Josh was sitting outside and looked like he wanted to leaving.
Back in the hostel area we out into action our dinner picnic plan. Josh had suggested a few days earlier we have a picnic one lunch or dinner. We started at the supermarket. There was an enormous freezer wall of cheese. Dani and I discussed at length the perfect cheese for the night. Josh got annoyed and wanted to move on. So we grabbed a tasty looking goats cheese. We picked up sliced chicken, sun dried tomatoes and Tabouli. Then we got sweet lychee liqueur with sprite to mix.
At the local patisserie we picked up more quiche and a frech baguette. Then 3 mini cakes: An éclair, a lemon tart and a chocolate mousse cake. we couldn't wait to dig into those.
We took everything down to the river. We sat like the local Parisians, feet by the edge of the paved paths. We watched the water dancing while we feasted. The weather was warm but not to hot or humid. It was perfect except for the swarm of midges that wouldn't leave us alone through out our meal.
The meal was georgeous. It was a really nice evening. We worked through the food until we were stuffed. Dessert was still waiting. We had to give our stomachs some digesting time first, but it was worth it. They were top class.
What an evening. The river become more packed as the night wore on and when we left people were queuing for a space by the water. We passed some hostellers we knew, sitting at a table outside the hostel. We decided to join them.
All three of us were worn out from a heavy day and the drinks we had just enjoyed. I don't think any of us were in a very social mood. Plus most of the group were slightly annoying. We went inside and got the reception to put Fight Club on again down stairs. There we retreated for the rest of the night. We relaxed on a couch until 2am then dragged ourselves up to bed.
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