Musee Rodin

This is Rodin's original Thinker sculpture which came about 15 years before the large one in the garden.

This was an adorable class of French children who were drawing the sculpture. They would bring it up to the teacher and she would say no, and erase what they had drawn, and then send them back to try again!
Tim in front of "The Gates of Hell" (this will be his only time!).
Rodin's sculpture of Balzac
This is the dome of the Les Invalides church under which Napolean's tomb is, taken from the garden at Rodin's museum.

Le Penseur (The Thinker!) at the Rodin museum. This is exhibited in the garden at the Rodin museum, and the original in smaller size is inside the museum.
One more picture of Invalides!


This is a picture of Les Invalides (Army Museum), and a picture of the view of the Eiffel Tower from there. After leaving the Army Museum we walked to the Musee Rodin.

Musee de l'Armee (Army Museum and Napoleon's Tomb)

WWII K-rations for the Americans
The Army museum was interesting, but not many things were really picture worthy (at least not to me!). Besides, everything was in French, so I'm not sure what it all was!
Here is a model of the church with a cutaway where the tomb is located - imagine a hole in the circle in the middle where you look down upon the tomb.
The altar of the church at Invalides.
This is the inside view of the golden dome which is directly above Napolean's tomb (high above!).

My pictures are very dark, but this is Napolean's tomb in the Les Invalides church. His body was originally entombed elsewhere and moved here in 1840, and it was supposedly perfectly preserved 19 years after his death. Inside this tomb is an oak coffin, and inside that an ebony coffin, then two lead ones, a mahogany one, then a tinplate one... anyway, not hard to see why he was so well preserved on arrival! The tomb lays directly beneath the golden dome of the church.

Pantheon

The view from the steps of the Pantheon!

Entombed in the crypt below are some of the great French writers including, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola and Voltaire. Marie Curie, and her husband Pierre are also here, along with many others!

This is Foucault's Pendulum which swings from a 220 ft. cable suspended from the dome above, and demonstrates the earth's rotation.



When Louis XV recovered from serious illness in the 1740's he decided to construct a church to honor Sainte Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris). During the Revolution the church was made into a pantheon, a place to entomb the good. Napoleon returned it to a church in the early 1800's, and it went back and forth a couple of times (from being a church to being a pantheon) until it was finally decided to make it a civic building for good (for the funeral of Victor Hugo).

Sorbonne

And Lindsay and Rachel in front of the ENORMOUS doors!
Here is the Chapelle de la Sorbonne (the chapel of the Sorbonne) from the Place de la Sorbonne.
Sorbonne, Universite de Paris was established in 1253! After we left the Musee National du Moyen Age we walked to the Sorbonne. Unfortunately, it is not open to visitors, but we walked around the area around it and stopped in a book store to buy a couple of books in French. Lindsay bought The Three Musketeers, Rachel bought a Harry Potter book, and I bought Madeleine!

Musee National du Moyen Age (Cluny Museum)

But the real star of the show, and most famous of the museum's displays are the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. These are a series of 6 tapestries, all similar in color, but each one depicts a different theme based on taste, hearing, sight, smell, touch and the sixth one "A Mon Seul Desir" (To My Sole Desire), which is also the largest of the series. These tapestries date from the 1400's, and are housed in a room with state-of-the art lighting to preserve them while still keeping them on display. The lighting, however, does not make for great picture taking!
And many religious artifacts as well...

The museum is full of beautiful relics like this ivory carving...


Today we started out the day by walking to the Musee National du Moyen Age (which means the National Museum of the Middle Ages - formerly known as the Cluny Museum). The museum is housed in a beautiful old building, but I have not read the book I bought about it yet, so I don't know what it used to be!

Musee Picasso

After visiting the Musee d'Orsay we walked to the Musee Picasso, and stopped on the way at L'As du Fallafel for one more falafel! Although the guidebooks we have say that you can take pictures in the Picasso museum as long as you don't use a flash, as soon as Lindsay took her camera out of her bag she was told not to take pictures by several of the museum employees. Therefore, I have no pictures of the museum. The art in the museum is not only works by Picasso, but also art by other artists that were part of Picasso's private collection.

Musee d'Orsay

Georges Seurat - "Cirque"
Paul Gauguin

Here is Whistler's mother - I wonder how she felt about this painting?
This Degas is not one of the more colorful of the dancers he is so famous for painting, but I thought it was beautiful nonetheless.
There are so many Monets, it is hard to pick just one!
This is another van Gogh which is less famous than those below, but I like it!
This is another van Gogh, a portrait of his bedroom.
Vincent van Gogh painted this self-portrait in Provence in 1889.
The Musee d'Orsay is the home of the impressionists of the 1800's, and what a home it is! This museum was a train station in it's former life, and was set to be destroyed in the 1970's when it was decided instead to make it into a museum. Until then most of the impressionists works were in various museums around Paris, and this was a way to bring them all together. This clock was in the original train station (or gare, in French!). Here is a peek at the magic of the Orsay!

Velib Bicycle Rental

This is a rather new thing in Paris. Since Paris hasn't been known as much of a bicycling city the mayor has implemented a relatively new bike rental program called Velib. These are three speed unisex bicycles that you can rent from "service points" such as this one. You pay 1 Euro per day, which allows you unlimited rides up to 30 minutes at a time. If you go over 30 minutes you are charged a surplus fee. There are weekly fees, and I believe you can even buy a pass which is good for a year. You can take the bike from one service point and return it to another, but renting requires a credit card, so if you don't return it you own it for a lot more than you would pay otherwise. Since it's winter there aren't many people on them, but it sounds like a good idea!

Blvd. Raspail Street Market

Tim (wearing one of his new scarves) is scoping out the produce!

On Friday we visited the Rue Cler , which is a street market along with many nice shops, where we purchased some different olive oils from Olivier and Co., and Tim had a mini quiche he fell in love with (but I was so cold I forgot to take any pictures)! On Sunday we decided to go to the Blvd. Raspail Street Market which is set up only as temporary stands along the Blvd. We decided to let the kids sleep in and went by ourselves. Although it is mostly food, it has an eclectic mix of things, and we purchased two scarves for Tim, some fleur de sel, and some clementines.