Musee D'Orsay and Le Petit Zinc

Thursday 5th June 2014

Blog post by le papa

Today we headed into town to meet the friends and to go to the Musee D'Orsay.  This is a great building in a converted railway building on the bank of the Seine River.

We took the metro into the Tuileries Metro stop. You  come out of the Metro and you come into the gardens stretching from the Louvre to the Orangerie. As we walked through the gardens we spied this helpful gardener helping with the weeding.

He was having a very happy time with wonderful weather all day.

Here is the lovely Musee building.  At both ends there are great windows which look out through the clocks to great views across Paris to Sacre Coeur.

Inside there were great sculpture works and paintings. It was great that we had Grande Maman to bring to life the art and put it in context.
I really liked the paintings by Monet.  There was a series of paintings of ballet dancers (including a statute) by Degas.  The favourite of the family was a giant white marble polar bear (Ours Blanc) by Pompon, which took him 10 years to complete.

I enjoyed a special exhibition on Van Gogh, which is very topical as we are heading to Provence where he did a lot of his work.

The children started to melt down as there was no food or drink provisions in the Musee. So we found a boulangerie just outside the Musee, amongst some historic statutes.  However do not sit on the base of the statutes or even close to them as the Musee staff monitor the outside and ask your children to move.

Here are delightful children enjoying the fine weather and a local park with the Parisian children. Please note the girls new scarves - tres francais!

A relaxing afternoon in the apartment, before putting on our best dining attire to go to Le Petit Zinc. A favourite restaurant we have been to 17 years ago, in the St Germain district.
The service was great and the décor is Art Deco. Maman and Papa shared a lovely roast lamb.  I was very proud of Oldest Son as he tried a very French menu, gravlax salmon starter, seared steak tartare and ice cream dessert. A very enjoyable evening and it was very safe on the metro and walking home to the apartment.