Celebrating 30 Years of Bliss: Musee D'Orsay

Took our favorite bus (No. 69) to the Musee d'Orsay. Unfortunately, absolutely no picture taking allowed even though Rick Steves' book says pictures are allowed as long as you don't use flash. I think he may have been confused with the Louvre.

The Musee d'Orsay is filled with many wonderful paintings by all the French superstars - Monet, Degas, van Gough - just to name a few. I loved seeing the original Degas ballerina sculpture titled The Fourteen Year Old Dancer. Also, van Gough's Starry Night, which had me singing that Don McLean song the rest of the day.

We also discovered an artist that we've never heard of before but decided that his paintings were among our favorite. His name is William Bouguereau and the painting that I liked is titled Equality Before Death. Scott preferred his Dante and Virgil. Both are pictured below (again from the Musee website) and are pretty haunting but the colors and detail were amazing.

Here are a few pictures of the outside of this beautiful museum, which was originally a train station. The sculptures are there to greet you before you enter and also on the plaza surrounding the museum. It's a relatively small museum compared to the Louvre so you can see most of it in one day.

We also had a nice lunch in the restaurant that was surprisingly good for museum food in a very elegant setting.

After all this culture I needed another shopping fix so we metro'd to the the Galleries LaFayette. Think Macy's on steroids. This department store spans three buildings - one for men, one for women, and one for gourmet foods. I'm sure there are housewares in there somewhere as well. The showcase here (more than the clothes I think) is the amazing glass dome that hovers over the floors of the main building.

Dinner tonight was at the very lively Cafe Rousillon near the Rue Cler. Of course, it was delicious and we've come to expect nothing less. We both had the wonderful rib eye steak with fries (or steak frites) and apple tartine for dessert. Sorry, we ate the dessert before I remembered to take a photo... It was so yummy served with a little dollop of creme fraiche.