Change of artistic form

The amount of time that needed to be spent on the Tour de France and the weather have conspired to make most of the tourism to this point the viewing of old stone buildings and their interiors. But everyone knows that.

Today we made a break from that pattern and instead looked at paintings.

But first a make up note, here is JQ's dinner last evening.We had walked past a restaurant on the Champs Elysee that was emitting a strong sauerkraut aroma so we set off last evening with choucroute in mind. We ended up at the same Alsatian restaurant where we ate last year. I think he actually has five different sausages there, one is hidden behind the kraut.

I had the other choice, the one with two link sausages, a round sausage and some salt pork. And kraut.

I was out early today just walking around. I wanted to see what the line looked like at the Notre Dame tower tour so I headed over that way. The tour opens at 10am and by 9am the line was about 50 people long. I may not actually make it up the church tower, I may end up being defeated by the line.

But I went inside for a bit when there were still only a handful of people there. I got a better picture of the Notre Dame de Paris.And I got a picture of the baptismal font.But the 10am opening bell of the show we wanted to see beckoned so we set off across the river to see "Paris au temps des Impressionistes, Les Chefs-d'oeuvre du musée d’Orsay à l'Hôtel de Ville". Paris in the time of the Impressionists, Masterpieces from the Orsay Museum at City Hall.

It was a free show and it was absolutely unqualifiedly the best zero euros I ever spent. For openers the exposition room was a large reception area of the city hall and we just don't have anything like that. The building itself was spectacular.

And the art!!!!!

There were a handful of Monets, Manet, a couple of Toulouse-Lautrec, several Edgar Degas, Gauguin, at least two van Gogh, Pissarro and then I walked around a corner and walked right up to one of the most famous paintings in the world, "Jeunes filles au Piano" (Girls at the Piano) by Pierre Auguste Renoir.

I have been in front of some famous paintings before but never without a crowd. I was occasionally joined by others but I had as much time as I wanted standing 18 inches away to go ahead and decide if I liked the painting. I do.

There was a strictly enforced no photo policy at the exposition so I compensated by getting an exterior shot of the extremely spectacular Hotel de Ville.I took a picture of this building across the street. It is a pretty nice looking building in its own right, it looks like it should be significant in some way.The significance is that they are having a big sale. That building is a department store, Bazaar de l'Hotel d'Ville, the store next to city hall.

We took a little sit down and then went out to view a couple of the usually visited monuments which we had not been yet able to visit.We met some people from Nebraska when we were taking the Eiffel Tower picture. I was lining up my shot when the husband standing behind me assured his wife that "they will be leaving soon" assuming as we all do sometimes that because it is after all France and because we don't understand much of what most of them are saying that they probably don't understand much of what we are saying.I took the picture and turned around and asked them if they needed our space. A good time was had by all.

Is the blue glass OK?