D’Orsay, Rodin and Napoleon

Tuesday Sept 11, 2018

Today was my (Jack’s) favorite museum day so far.

The Cluny Museum of natural history and archaeology is just a couple of blocks from our apartment, so we started our day going there. But, oddly, it is closed on Tuesday. So we proceeded to walk the mile and a half or so to the Musée d’Orsay, which is a beautiful and old railroad station,  converted in 1970 into a stunning new museum intended to bridge the gap between the Louvre and the National Modern Art Museum. What a beautiful and accessible museum. It had the most interesting art (to us) and it managed the crowds to make viewing easy and unhurried. We saw many examples of works by, most notably, the great impressionists.

Along the way, we passed a museum of the history of medicine, located in a Parisian medical school. We went into the building to check it out. Honestly, it felt like a scene from an old WWII movie. Old. Echoing. We climbed a few flights of stairs, followed signs, but there was a note on the door that it was closed until afternoon. We vowed to go back, but it looks like we will run out of time this trip.

After Musée d’Orsay we walked over to the Musée Rodin. I had accidentally seen his famous sculpture The Thinker looking over a garden wall from the top of a sightseeing bus 10 years ago in my only brief visit to Paris. I’d always wanted to come back. It was far better than expected. Honestly, I never realized just how much motion and emotion could b captured in marble, plaster or bronze. The man was a genius. Most notably, his Gates of Hell, a massive sculpture that he worked on until his death, portrayed Dante’s vision of the final layer into hell. (A copy of this and The Thinker had also been in the Musée D’Orsay.)

One of the advantages of  staying in an apartment instead of a hotel is having the option not to have to eat out. So we stopped at the poissonerie and produce market right down the street and bought a gorgeous filet of swordfish (espadon) and enjoyed a delicious home-cooked dinner on the deck of our flat.