A weekend in Paris: Day 1

We arrived in Paris on Friday night and went straight to the hotel. Lovely place, Hotel Printemps. Very near a Metro station in a leafy, quiet neighbourhood.

Saturday was full-on. First we went to the Musee L'Orangerie, awesome. One part of the gallery was designed by Monet himself, to display massive panels of his waterlillies. Unlike anything I have ever seen and definitely recommended. Almost more impressive was a temporary installation: private collection of Heinz Berggruen (the collection now belongs to the German government). He focused on modern artists like Picasso, Matisse and Klem with an astonishing number of Picasso paintings, before and after his cubism period.

Then we wandered around in the Jardins Tuileries and after that to a street food market Marche St Honorè with beautiful colours, flavours and textures.

Lunch was a crepe with Nutella and strawberries 🤤

In the afternoon we had a guided tour through the Louvre. The building is almost more impressive than the art itself! I am not joking when I say there were tens of thousands of people. It was just mind blowing, have never seen so many people in my life. I thought this was the off season! There was a crowd at least 50 people deep in front of the Mona Lisa. I just strolled past, and refused to be part of that circus. There were so many artworks to enjoy and appreciate instead.

We also booked a quayside dinner on the Seine and then a boat trip to take in the Paris sights at night. The dinner was fine (the service not that fantastic) then a wait of about 40 minutes in the rain with sooo many other people to do the boat trip that ended up being changed due to the Seine almost in flood after all the rain over the past few weeks. At least the Eiffel Tower looked beautiful.

We got home (at the hotel) at about 10.30pm and fell into bed. Long day on our feet!

Photos to follow, doesn't upload on hotel wifi for some reason.Leggi altro