Le sixième jour: Paris - Musee d'Orsay

On our sixth day in Paris, we decided to go back to the Musee d'Orsay. Our attempt to get inside was unsuccessful the previous day so we wanted to try our luck again. We got to the museum a little bit earlier than the day before, but we were still greeted by a sea of people who had already lined up for admission. Since it wasn't raining this time, we decided that the wait would be tolerable. And actually, we didn't really have to wait for very long. Again, the museum's security told us to go inside after they spotted us with our children. Those munchkins can sure come in handy sometimes! Here is a photo of the museum's exterior.

Once inside, we feasted our eyes on the museum's spectacular interior. The Musee d'Orsay was converted from an old train station with clock towers on two sides of the building. Alan had proclaimed that whoever did the interior design of the museum was a genius (that was before we found ourselves on sets of staircases and escalators that took you from the very top floor to the very bottom - and none of the floors in between). Here are some photos of the museum's interior.



We perused through some of the special exhibits that were located on the ground floor. We checked out the Pastels exhibit first, thinking that Jocelyn would enjoy the pieces. Unfortunately, Jocelyn wasn't too impressed by the pieces so we went into the adjacent salle to look at the Picasso / Manet exhibit. The focus of this exhibit was on Pablo Picasso's reinterpreted versions of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe (The Lunch on the Grass). Jocelyn is a fan of Picasso, so she enjoyed those pieces more.

By the time we were done with the Picasso / Manet exhibit, it was time for lunch. We ventured up the second floor to dine at Le Restaurant. The dining room at Le Restaurant was absolutely beautiful, with opulent fixtures that bring French palaces to mind - to my mind at least. My mother instantly fell in love with this place, and offered to treat us to an expensive lunch.


After lunch, we went back down to the ground floor to look at the statues.

Then Gabriel became quite excited when he recognized this statue of the Little Prince from his My Little Orsay picture book.

I bought the book for him about four years ago, the last time we visited the Musee d'Orsay together. Seeing this statue jogged his memory and this trip to the museum instantly became more entertaining to him. He then started to roam around the halls to see if he could recognize other pieces that were in his book. Interestingly, we left the book in Oakland so it's been at least four months since he last saw the book. And even when we were still in Oakland, he read the book less frequently as he got older. I was very surprised that he was able to recall these pieces so readily. Here are some photos of some of the other pieces that he recognized.


What was truly amazing was that he recognized Compotier, verre et pommes in Maurice Denis's Hommage à Cézanne and asked why it showed a group of gentlemen were huddling around Paul Cézanne's painting.

After an afternoon of exploring the museum, we decided it was time to leave and grab some dinner. As with our trip to the Louvre, we didn't have time to see everything. But that will just give us something to do on our next trip to Paris, oui?