Paris Express Trip...

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It was a Monet-fest weekend in France! This was the weekend I had most been looking forward to, even before I left to come to Germany, and I was so glad that it had finally arrived! We almost didn’t make it to France, though, because there was a huge problem at the rental car place, and we almost couldn’t get a car. But we finally did, and we finally made it to Paris around 11:00 pm on Friday.

Saturday morning we got up early and headed to our first stop: The Louvre! We knew ahead of time that we would not be spending too much time in this amazing place, only because there was so much we wanted to do. It was so huge, and so amazing, I can’t even put it into words. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa, stopping in to see Venus di Milo along the way. It was almost surreal standing in front of the heavily guarded, glass encased Mona Lisa. It is arguably the most popular painting in the world, and there I was, standing right in front of it, looking her in the eyes. I wish Mom could have seen her, too. After those two major pieces, we searched through the rooms for Monet and Van Gogh. I knew the Louvre would be an emotional experience for me since it was the one place that Mom wanted to visit before she passed. As with all art exhibits, I’m sure she was there with me.

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After only spending about an hour or so in the Louvre, we headed to Musee d’Orsay, THE Impressionist museum in Paris. It was so wonderful and contained paintings by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, etc. The paintings were so beautiful. Andrea and I absolutely loved it because we are both very much into the Impressionistic style. Steven was probably wondering, “Why did I come to a second museum?”

Even for art lovers, Andrea and I were a little art-ed out after two such overwhelming museums. We decided to take an art break and head to the Eiffel Tower. I asked Andrea, the history major, to give me a brief history along the way, and it was rather interesting: The tower was originally built as an entranceway to the World’s Fair around 1888, and Parisians hated it because it was so ugly and could be seen from everywhere. It was supposed to be torn down, but became useful as a radio tower and was used in a major battle. After this, the city could not think of parting with the tower, so they just left it up.

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The lines were horrendously long, and we didn’t even consider going up in it after seeing the masses of people filling the area under the tower. We just didn’t have enough time in Paris to wait hours in line to get to the top of the tower. Maybe next time.

It started to rain pretty hard and was getting very nasty and cold, so we decided it was probably time to make another museum visit. This time, we ventured back across town to the Musee de l’Orangerie, the museum where Monet donated most of his huge waterlily paintings before he died. Steven was definitely Monet-ed out by this point and stayed in the lobby to nap instead of seeing these masterpieces. The two rooms that contained Monet far surpassed my feelings of elation that I experienced at the Zurich museum. It was moving when we stepped in because we did not know what to expect. Andrea asked, “Do you want to hold my hand?” So we held hands as we proceeded to take it all in. These were even more massive than the ones in Zurich, probably covering at least thirty feet of wall.