February 28. Paris Free Time Day.

We slept in a little after two late nights. We went and got Starbucks next door to our hotel while we looked over and discussed what we wanted to do for the day. I was disappointed there is no Strawberry Acai Refreshers on the menu here! I had to settle for Mixed Berry… not as good.

For our first adventure, we decided to go to the Orsay Museum. It has French Art from 1848 - 1914 (start of World War I). Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, and many other big names. The setting for the museum was very unique and awesome… an old train station that was built for the 1900 World’s Fair. It was a big, open, airy beautiful space. It was interesting to see what artists were painting over that period, and how they painted it, changed. First they were in kind of fantasyland… painting fanciful things and rich people despite the industrial revolution changing everything. Then the paintings became more realistic and, in some cases, brutal. Painting things as they are instead of the way they wanted them to be. The paintings of the water lilies and Van Gogh’s self portraits were the most memorable to me. They also had some paintings that were just massive and very impressive. I also liked the exhibit and models on the Opera house and its opulence in front of state as well as the hidden parts in the massive back and under stage areas. 

 

 

From the Orsay, we decided to head back to the Montmartre area. Kory said it was his favorite part of Paris. We started at a tiny café and had a cocktail and Croque Madame… Basically a fancy ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on it. Then we retraced our steps from the previous day. Penny wanted to look in some of the shops we passed, and we wanted to look at all the artists in the square. Most of them were doing variations of caricatures, but there was some art sprinkled in too. After walking around there for a bit we took the Metro back to our hotel.

 

 

There were so many options for places to eat around our hotel and the Republique Square area. We chose one that looked good, Mon Coco. We ate on a nice heated patio area and had good drinks and great food for our last dinner. Kory’s ordered one of the specialty drinks, and it was crazy… and had a ton of cream.

We headed back to the hotel and turned in “early” at about 10:30 since we had to pack and had a relatively early morning coming up.