Paris: Deux Jours

On our second day in Paris we planned on visiting the Musee d'Orsay and the Eiffel Tower! We hopped on the metro and headed straight for the museum, since we had heard that the Musee d'Orsay always has really long lines to get in. On our way we stopped at a little cafe that had a street window where you could order bakery items on-the-go. We ordered two chocolate croissants in French! Well, it was probably as basic as it gets when it comes to speaking French. Nonetheless, we felt very Parisian as we took bites of our delicious croissants on our walk to the museum from the metro stop. It ends up that the reviews were true about the waiting line, because we had to wait for about 30 minutes to get in! It was worth it though because the museum was great.

 

It is also much smaller than the Louvre, so we were able to really take in every painting, sculpture, decorative art and photograph the museum holds. My favorite part of the Musee d'Orsay was their extensive impressionist collection. 

Impressionism is my favorite painting style and I got to see a lot of my favorite artists like Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Mary Cassatt and Pierre Auguste Renoir. I especially loved seeing Degas's "The Ballet Class," a few of Monet's Rouen Cathedral series and Renoir's "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette."

My favorite was probably Monet's Rouen Cathedrals as I've always been a huge Monet fan, but I also loved Edouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. For anyone who watches Gossip Girl, (yes I had to bring this up) you may know this painting as the one Blair Waldorf was standing at when she first met Prince Louis of Monaco. They bond over the fact that it is both of their favorite paintings and I can see why. It's really interesting in that it depicts a nude woman having a picnic with two fully clothed men. There was a lot of disapproval of this painting when it was first exhibited. Some people thought the woman should not be nude while the men were clothed, others were uncomfortable with the subject matter of real and current people (as opposed to the usual nudity of goddesses and supernatural beings), while some saw it as a statement about prostitution in Paris. Either way, people were pretty upset about this piece then, but now it has its own wall in the Musee d'Orsay for all to see! It definitely jumps out at you and is a piece you'll always remember. 

After looking at the Impressionism section (and getting yelled at in French for taking pictures), we made our way further around the museum seeing sculptures, wood work, and more paintings. We also took a moment to look through the huge clock on the museum's top floor to see the Seine outside below. 

After thoroughly enjoying the Musee d'Orsay we headed to our next stop... The Eiffel Tower! I was really excited to see the most iconic image of Paris as I've constantly reblogged Eiffel Tower photos on Tumblr and dreamed of seeing it in person. As we rode the metro to the "Tour Eiffel" stop, you could see the top of it from the metro windows! The ride there gave us a glimpse of how much the Eiffel Tower literally towers over the city as we could see it out the window no matter how far we were. 

Finally we got to our stop, followed the tower until we got closer and closer and were right there! When it's in front of you, it's a lot bigger than you would imagine. Just the support beams alone were much more humongous than I had expected. We made sure to take plenty of pictures and just stare at it for a while.

As it was about 4pm Paris time, we knew the sun would set soon and we'd be able to see the tower all lit up. Since our hostel was in Saint-Ouen, 20-25 minutes north of the tower, we thought it best to stay in the the area and wait for it to get dark. Since we were pretty hungry we roamed the nearby streets looking for a place to get dinner while enjoying the walk past cute shops and patisseries, with the tower overlooking us. 

After checking out a few menus we decided on a restaurant and got pretty basic meals. We made sure to get seconds of bread because there's no better time for baguettes than in Paris! About 2 hours later (seriously... service is so slow and chill all over Europe) we finished our meal and went back to the Eiffel Tower. It looked amazing all lit up and I can definitely understand why Paris would be called "The City of Lights" since the tower lights up everything!

As we stood at the tower's front we were approached by several people selling cool little souvenirs hoping we would buy a mini Eiffel tower or light up toy. Usually we would say "no merci," but I knew that the Eiffel Tower sparkled at some time increment and wanted to ask one of the salespeople when. I ended up asking one of them which resulted in him trying to get us to buy his souvenirs, but ultimately giving us the answer to our question. The tower was going to sparkle in only 10 minutes! We waited it out and when the time hit the hour the Eiffel Tower began sparkling from top to bottom.

The second it started, everyone around us started cheering and then continued in excitement oohing and aahing. It lasted for a full minute and I took a video so I could re-watch it as many times as I wanted. It was so beautiful and unlike anything I had ever seen before. I think if I lived in Paris I would never get bored of it. As the tower stopped twinkling a minute later, we were sad, but knew that then, if not already, we were definitely in love with Paris. With three days left we had a ton more to see and rested up before our next day meeting up with our friends to see the Arc de Triomphe.