Musee d'OrsayI am very sorry, but I forgot to mention a very important part of our departure to France. Mostly this is important to Pat: as we were packing up the car and pulling out of the driveway at my place, Dad ran over Pat's foot. I'm not really sure how. The door was open, Pat's foot was still on the ground, and Dad backed up. Oops. Good thing he wasn't hurt, because we all thought it was pretty funny and were laughing too hard to help out.
Anyway, after our Notre Dame adventures we thought it would be nice to walk along the river to the Musee d'Orsay. Little did we know, Paris is gigantic. What we thought would be a short stroll really took about 45 minutes. But we did it and it was worth it. The Musee d'Orsay is an art museum built in an old railway station, so the architecture is strikingly different from the Louvre or any other art building you can imagine. The first floor is former private collections, the top floor is primarily impressionist works, and inbetween there is a fair amount of random stuff. The museum boasts that it "picks up where the Louvre leaves off," which is pretty true. We enjoyed the cafe before the art, then wandered separately until closing time.
We then sat around outside, glad to be off our feet, while Dad consulted the travel bible (a.k.a. Rick Steve's guide to Paris) to see where we should go to dinner. Rick suggested a place that wasn't too far away, but gave no address or exact location...so naturally we decided to go there. And, naturally, it was actually quite a lot further than we anticipated, and not very easy to find. Chris and Dad used their French to ask for directions, but nobody we asked knew where the place was. Finally a lady took pity on us and helped us out. She also scolded a group of waiters who didn't know where our restaurant was (which was pretty awesome to watch, and something that we could all understand through her expressions and tone of voice). Our restaurant was nowhere near the street corner that Rick claimed it was on, but we managed. It was actually quite delicious.
To end the night, we decided to take a cruise down the river Seine. The cruise took us down one bank, up the other, and turned around right in front of the Eiffel Tower. We timed our cruise just right, exactly at sunset so that we left in the light, came back at dusk, and reached the Eiffel Tower right as it lit up. Pretty magical.
...a little Degas (for the record, Degas creeps me out. Mostly because he had a fetish for preteen ballerinas.)
Chris and Dad asking for directions. This guy led us in the wrong direction, but at least he tried to help.
On the river cruise. One of the guys on the bridge poured water all over the people at the front of the boat.
