Musee d'Orsay and Eiffel Tower

We walked about 20 minutes from the hotel to the world’s premier museum of Impressionist painting. The impressionists (approximately 1840 to WW1 which is known as the “Belle Époque”) was the time of departure from classical style and themes to lighter, more relevant painting. At first, the Society (of artists) rejected this style but it proved very popular and some artists lived long enough to see financial reward while others died early such as Vincent Van Gogh. We followed the Rick Steves audio guide, which was helpful but due to the museum moving pieces there was a search for the key pieces.

After some tea, we decided on Beth’s bucket list Eiffel Tower instead of Montmartre so Nancy moved the latter to the next day and scratched off the Champs Elysses and Arc de Triomphe. We sprung for the elevator ride to the 2nd level fearing a case of FOMO as Jan had regretted not taking the ride. Nancy and Jan had lost each other in the crowd two years ago and faced with the last run of the hop-on-hop off bus and fatigue ran out of time and energy to go to the top. As it turned out, we were glad to take in the views but the 45 minute wait to get a ticket and on the elevator seemed long.Read more