dannyman.toldme.com

Musée D’Orsay

Today is a good day. The MIJE is a dump. The shower at least had a changing area, but no bench, and the shower head sprayed all over. I layed my money belt in my pants, and hung those from the hook on the door, over which I draped my towel, to keep my important clothes dry.

After a baguette breakfast, meted out by a surly immigrant, I discovered that my bunk neighbor was planning to hit Musée D’Orsay, just as I was. He was also, like my new companion for the same destination, Korean. We ran over to Kyeong Hae’s metro stop, but we were a half hour late, and she wasn’t there. At the museum, she explained that she assumed that she had missed the boat, herself being fifteen minutes late. Kyeong Hae and I stood in line together for forty-five minutes, while our comrade had the €30 Paris museum pass, and didn’t need to stand in line to purchase tickets.

The Musée D’Orsay was fantabulous. I dug the Realist and Impressionist paintings, found some furniture, checked out a model of a part of Paris, some models of a theatre. It wasn’t long in to my visit that Kyeong Hae and I lost track of each other, never to meet again. The museum is located in a former train station and the conversion left lots of airy open spaces that are themselves worthy of admiration. In one corner they displayed some windows and house fixtures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, with a model of the Robie House. I saw no mention of the real thing being in Chicago.

I had been thinking to grab an inexpensive, filling lunch at McDonald’s but instead succumbed to the smell from the fancy restaurant inside the museum. Le menu du jour, avec un vin blanc, and €21, I was feeling pretty darned fine.

Sometimes you just have to swallow your budget and shell out for something new and different, however extravagent.