Paris Museums
Can you go to Paris and skip all the museums? Of course you can but I doubt if I ever will. It’s one of the reasons I love Paris so much, along with the great food, quaint streets and fun shopping. If you are going to see museums I strongly recommend you purchase the Museum Pass. You can purchase a 2 day pass for 48 Euros, 4 day for 62 Euros, or 6 day for 74 Euros. I usually buy the 2 day pass right at the airport when I’m buying my train ticket, and it isn’t activated until you go to your first Museum. There are at least 30 sites covered by the pass, and if you’re planning on seeing at least 4 on the list you are already money ahead. The other thing it saves you is time. Without the pass you usually have to wait in two lines everywhere you go. A line to buy your ticket and then a line for admittance through security. If you already have the pass many times you can just walk in through security and that is almost always the shorter line. You need to be strategic once you activate your pass to maximize its use - research ahead of time when the museums you want to see are open, the hours they are open because some have evening hours certain days, and also location so you’re grouping museums that are close to each other together.
In addition to the museums that I love in Paris I also love getting up and having coffee and a pastry at the neighborhood patisserie or boulangerie. What’s the difference? A patisserie specializes in pastry and a boulangerie specializes in bread. But a boulangerie will also have croissants because that is considered a bread. A very delicious bread. And you rarely have to walk more than a block to find one. We had a great one right at the end of our street.
An artisan Boulanger means it is baked on the premises. Eric Kayser won a contest in France for the best bread! And has three locations in New York City called Madison Kayser and numerous spots in Paris called Eric Kayser. Almond croissant for me and chocolate for Julie. What a great start to our day!
First stop Musee de l’Orangerie - perhaps my most favorite museum in Paris. It’s located right at Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries. The museum was built specifically to showcase 8 of Monet’s Water Lilies. That alone is reason enough to visit, but the lower level has well over 100 Impressionist paintings that are not to be missed.
Two rooms each housing 4 Water Lilies. You feel like you’re actually in the water!
You can easily spend a few hours there, but now we’re heading across The Seine to visit the Musee d’Orsay - another favorite of mine. This museum houses French art of the 1800’s and early 1900’s picking up where the Louvre’s art collection leaves off. The building is a renovated train station and it’s absolutely stunning.
You find locks on most all the bridges that cross the Seine. Locks of Love! Except the bridges don’t love them. Too heavy so periodically they are removed.
A spectacular ceiling - and incredible paintings and furniture.
We had worked up an appetite so we headed just down the street to find a restaurant. It’s not hard to find delicious food in Paris and sure enough just a block or two away we decided to give Mucha Cafe a try. It had started to rain so we opted to eat inside, although even in the rain often the French opt for dining Al Fresco. (there are still lots of smokers there so that may be why).
Nicoise salad for Julie and chicken and salad for me. And wine😊
We had one more museum on our list for the day so headed to Musee Rodin. I had never been to Rodin and I wasn’t disappointed. If you’re pressed for time just focus on the garden. The house is interesting but the garden is where the majority of his most famous pieces are located.
Bottom right is the very famous Thinker. There are 29 other authorized copies of this statue so you might have seen one of those in another museum. Bottom left is The Burghers of Calais, 6 city fathers trudging to their execution. The facial expressions are incredible.
We felt the need to check out one of the famous department stores next so off to Bon Marche we went. Bon Marche means inexpensive, but that is not really the case anymore. It’s the oldest department store in Paris and has a gorgeous atrium. We browsed a bit and landed in the cafe for tea and dessert. Sorry I forgot to take a picture but as I recall it was a delicious slice of chocolate banana bread.
Bon Marche. Located in the 6th Arrondissement. Lots of great shops in the area.
We browsed a bit, not sure if Julie made a purchase but I know I didn’t, and then started working our way back to the apartment looking for a spot to have dinner. Julie really wanted to eat outside and even though it was a little chilly almost all the restaurants have outside heaters, so we picked Cafe Belloy. She was waiting for a FaceTime call from her son and daughter in law to do a gender reveal across the ocean - so sitting outside and taking that call seemed like the best plan.
We had stopped at a children’s boutique after lunch and Julie bought a pair of pink baby socks and a pair of blue - so she would be covered either way. Blue it is! A salmon pizza for Julie and another Croque Monsieur for me. I ordered a salad and they brought what appeared to be an entire head of lettuce! And wine😊
That was the end of our first day with the museum pass. Three places is decent and we had 4 on our list for day 2 of our passes.
First stop the next day was brunch. We slept in a bit to recover from the time change and headed to my favorite breakfast/brunch restaurant on the Ile St Louis, the smaller of the two islands in the Seine River. Notre Dame is on the other larger island called Ile de la Cite. The Cafe St Regis is very close to Notre Dame, and appears to have been in business forever. The waiters wear long white aprons and the food is excellent.
Eggs Benedict for Julie and omelette for me. Excellent coffee too.
We had to at least walk by Notre Dame so Julie could see it. Makes me so sad but I know they will rebuild. You can’t get very close to it as there is lots of scaffolding. They are still quite concerned about the flying buttresses on the right side not being very stable, so of course taking every precaution. Lots of people there to see it and take pictures.
It could have been so much worse so glad to see it’s still standing.
We were off to Saint-Chapelle! This is a must see site if you are in Paris. A Gothic church built in the 13th century to house the Crown of Thorns. (The Crown Of Thorns is now kept at Notre Dame and with the fire currently at the Louvre) The stained glass windows on the second floor just take your breath away with over 1,100 Bible scenes.
There are guides available in various languages to help you decipher the windows. Or you can just enjoy them especially on a sunny day (which we did not have) but beautiful with any weather.
We had to at least make a stop in the Louvre. Julie had to see the Mona Lisa and a couple of the other destination pieces. While I’ve been to the Louvre a number of times I haven’t really checked out many other areas so this time made a point to find out if they had any pieces by the artist Caravaggio. He was an Italian painter from the 1500’s and I’m a big fan of his work. Lo and behold they have three of his paintings so we found them and I was excited about that.
Top left - Winged Victory, Top right - Mona and her paparazzi, Bottom left - Venus de Milo and Julie (goddesses of love) and Bottom right - just one of many beautiful ceilings in the Louvre.
One of the Caravaggio paintings.
Next we are on to Napoleons Tomb. They just had a big exhibit about Napoleon here in Kansas City at the art museum, so I was compelled to stop at the tomb. The building is beautiful and our US Capital is modeled after it. It started to rain quite hard so I wasn’t able to take a good picture of the outside. I had been there before and it’s usually pretty quiet, so was surprised when we arrived to see a huge crowd of people entering. They kept pouring in, and it became apparent that they were all locals and didn’t speak much English. We were quite confused. I kept trying to find out what was going on but all people would say is Napoleon! Well we all know he’s in the tomb so finally I found someone who in very broken English told me that it was the anniversary of his death and there was going to be a ceremony with his descendants in attendance. So we stayed and it was quite a show. Lots of military and pomp and circumstance. A bonus event!
You look down through the rotunda onto the tomb and it’s huge. Inside the tomb is an oak coffin, then an ebony coffin, two lead coffins, then mahogany and finally tinplate. And then Napoleon!
The building also houses several other tombs of his family members.
The rotunda ceiling is gorgeous.
We had several restaurants on our list but discovered that many are closed in Paris on Sunday - good for them! We just walked around and checked out menus of those that were open and ended up having a very nice meal but there was scaffolding on the building so I can’t even tell you the name.
It is white asparagus season and it was on every menu. So we opted to share that as an appetizer and it was excellent. Then a steak for Julie and Cod with lots of green beans for me. We shared a slice of apple tart for dessert. And wine😊
Our last stop on our last day of the museum pass was to walk up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. We purposely wanted to do it in the evening to see the lights. Plus it is a lot less crowded at night so we got right in. I had never gotten to do this on my previous visits so I was excited. The walk up isn’t that tough. Another spiral staircase which we were getting very used to, and 284 steps to the top.
You can walk 360 degrees around the entire top so a great view of the entire city. Seeing the Eiffel Tower twinkle on the hour never gets old. Top right is the Champs-Elysees.
On the second day we made 4 stops with the museum pass so definitely got our moneys worth. We had some rain but nothing that deterred us from our plan, and the evening view was spectacular. Another great couple of days in Paris! Check back soon because I have lots more to share😊