Day 3 Part 1: Walking Tour & Musee d’Orsay

Wednesday, 21st of June 2017

First thing I decided to take a free walking tour of the heart of Paris. I met my guide at the Fountain of St. Michel. My hosts tell me this fountain is “the” meeting place if you are going to meet a lover or a blind date. 

St. Michel Fountain

        We began by walking down a small street, which was part of the Latin Quarter, where our guide explained that Latin was not for Latino, but Latin as in the language. This has been an area where students have lived, and originally several hundred years ago, students all took Latin language courses. He also pointed out the architecture that we were seeing: 5 floors with balconies on 2 of the levels, and these tiny skylight looking windows at the very top. He said the maids used to live in those tiny rooms on the very top, but today, mostly students live up there. The Latin Quarter is still home to mostly students today.

            So then we learned the history of why France looks the way it does today. In the 1850’s, I think it was Napoleon III, who hired a man named Houssman to rebuild France. Previous to that time the streets were very small, very narrow, and every few years they were getting blockaded when the people had a rebellion. So it was decided to make the streets much wider, and these 5 story buildings were built. Which explains why you can see them all over Paris, not just in fancy neighborhoods, but all of Paris. They tore down 70% of the city and rebuilt it. People were given one week’s notice to move to the country during construction and when they came back, their rent had increased so much that only the very wealthy returned to Paris. The poor were forced to stay outside the city.

            We then walked to the first palace of the Louvre. Louis XIV was born in this palace and grew up here, but he hated Paris, which is why he built the Versailles palace and moved out there. When Napoleon Bonaparte took over, he lived in the Louvre Palace as well. We toured the rest of the outside of the Louvre and the Tuileries garden.

Embassy of Texas

            Later on in the tour we passed a building which used to be the Embassy of Texas. Back when Texas declared itself an independent nation before becoming part of the United States, France was the first country to recognize Texas as its own country, and therefore there was an Embassy of Texas in Paris.

            We ended at a pub where you get a discount on your first drink at the bar with your Free tour ticket, but I walked down the street and had a salad at a little Patisserie/Bistro instead. It wasn’t anything to be excited about, just lettuce, some pasta salad, and the end of a baguette.

            On the tour I heard the Musee d’Orsay had the largest impressionist painting collection in Paris. Impressionist paintings are my favorite, so to keep out of the heat, which was about 98 degrees again, I walked back to the museum.

            They were showing a special exhibit of the portraits Cezanne had done of his family and friends and of himself. He kind of strikes me as the first goth when I saw his first self portrait as a young man. He decided to paint himself in a very dark light, sort of glowering, all he needs are two pointy teeth and he would have looked like a vampire.

Another terrible selfie, but isn't the ceiling in Musee d'Orsay cool!

            So in this museum it was also the first time I decided to pay for a headset. Well I thought you got headphones, but it’s actually like an old cellphone you dial the number next to the painting and then hold it up to your ear, and it tells you about the painting. I had always thought these were for people who spoke a different language, but no! These little snippets of audio give you so much more information than what is written by the paintings. I will forever be using these things any time I go to a museum. It’s nice to look at ‘pretty paintings’ but ten times more enjoyable when you get to learn about the history of the painting, and why the painter did what he did.