I thought that I.M. Pei's design for the pyramid entry to the museum was very cool; the contrast between the old part of the museum and the ultra-modern take on the pyramid just works. Somehow despite the huge amount of people there I managed to get this photo of it:
We saw tons of neat stuff, from Renaissance paintings:
to ancient Egyptian mummies:
to medieval stuff...which I don't seem to have any pictures of...
to gladiator armor - which is freakishly small:
Personally I enjoyed the architecture of the museum just as much as the artwork inside it:
In the evening, along with Andrew and Heather we went to Notre Dame for an organ concert. The singers and the organists were excellent. We thought about buying a CD of the music but figured that it just wouldn't be the same if you weren't sitting inside of the church. As most of you will already know Andrea and I aren't church goers, and probably never will be; however, I am a big architecture fan and you really can't beat the big old European cathedrals for that. They have the church quite nicely lit up at night so, after a bit of playing with the camera settings, I was able to get some great photos.
The walk back along the river at night was quite beautiful as well.
Since we hadn't had enough of museums yesterday we headed over to Musee D'Orsay this morning. Andrea was really looking forward to this since she hadn't realized that the collection of paintings at the Louvre was so one-dimensional and that there would be no Monee's, Van Goghs, etc. We headed straight for the 5th level which is where they were located. Andrea LOVED these. I liked them, but not nearly as much as her. I like sculpture better, I think that I like the three dimensional stuff better. Lucky for me, there was lots of sculpture there as well.
After having a seat outside of Musee D'Orsay for a little while to rest our feet and legs we headed off in the direction of Musee Rodin. While walking down Quai D'Orsay who should we run into but (TMI'ers take note) Evan Hurry and his wife. Evan and I used to work together at Trudell. We chatted briefly and then headed our separate ways. It really is a small world.
We eventually made our way over to the Musee Rodin which I really enjoyed. I'd been looking forward to seeing The Thinker for quite some time. I got a few decent pictures of it:
and then Andrea took this one of me contemplating The Thinker:
We had a simple salad/sandwich from the cafeteria in the gardens at the Musee Rodin, then explored the gardens and looked at the sculptures there. There were some neat sculptures there too; The Gates of Hell is just weird:
We thought these guys were kind of funny. Maybe we'd just seen to much art, but we thought that this guy looked as if he was saying "Dude!":
and this one was saying "What's your problem?":
After a brief stop off at 'home' we headed out for the short walk over to the Champ du Mars and the Eiffel Tower. The engineer and architecture fan in me was really looking forward to this. We decided to do the walk up the stairs to the second observation deck...all 690 steps up. It was actually much easier than we anticipated; we weren't even winded when we got to the top. The view from up there was fantastic. Here's a few pictures of the tower and the view:
I think I'll probably head back later on this evening to see it at night as well. I don't think I'll bother going back up though; I just want to get some photos at night.
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