Louvre – check; Eiffel tower* – check; Musee d’Orsay – check; Museum of Modern Art – check; L’Orangerie – check; copious amounts of shopping – double check; holiday to recover from holiday… well that might have to wait for a bit 🙂

I just have to say that for me the L’Orangerie was the best part of the whole trip. Those wrap around Monets are incredible and the moments when I walk around with my jaw on the floor in an art gallery are few and far between. The fact that you get a few Renoirs, Gauguins, Picassos and Cezannes et al are just an added bonus. Its bigger sister, the Musee d’Orsay, had a wonderful impressionist gallery housed in an old railway station. Chris took a picture of me at the clock face but I looked like I was having teeth pulled so I’ve put up a picture of just the clock instead.

The other worthwhile stop was in fact the Museum of Modern Art. Now if you plan on seeing it, please note that there are in fact two museums of modern art in Paris. The difference is one is free, the other isn’t**. Can you guess which one I went for? Well, if you didn’t know my tightarse ways by now you should have guessed that I don’t much like spending money on exhibitions (but incidentally have no problem doing it shopping). Anyway, the City MOMA is absolutely free and has a pretty good cafe there to boot and featured such highlights as a morse code chandelier. There was also a mouse running in a  circle on one of the floors, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t one of the exhibits, though it was pretty entertaining for about five minutes or so.

I believe I have now maxed out my credit card so it’s just as well we’re leaving Paris tomorrow <sob>. Who would have thought that I’d ever have wanted to stay?

*this involved standing underneath it in the rain, looking up and thinking ‘just can’t be bothered’
**there are probably other differences too, but I would have had to fork out the bucks to see it so I guess we’ll never know.