Day of Culture

Kyndall and I decided to blitz the Notre Dame for 7am church service, which meant we woke up early.  Breakfast was excitin- I prepped for an attempt at French using my dictionary that morning.  I felt somewhat accomplished, although I didn't mean to order thinly sliced pieces of meat nor a child sized coffee.  I was in high spirits until the food came and I learned that instead of "good morning" I had been saying "good evening".  I thought the waitress' laugh was because I was so surprisingly fluent:

 

From the Notre Dame we went to the St. Chapelle, which was the best church of Europe in my opinon.  St. Chapelle was the personal church of King Louis IX and once held the Crown of Thorns and other relics.  King Louis (later Saint Louis) could enter the chapel directly from his royal living corridors, which were attached to the chapel by a second story fly-over.

The stained glass was stunning:

From the Chapelle we went to the Musee d'Orsay:

The museum is in an old train station and is dedicated to impressionism. In Paris, wherever we were, it felt like I was walking through my old history books- I saw first hand a lot of the art that my old textbooks included.  It was a surreal.

Cool bits:

They had a dedicated exhibit to Marquis de Sade, who was one weiiirrrdd dude.  His writings and philosophy is what "sadism" or "sadistic" comes from.  The exhibit had crazy quotes of his along the walls and then displayed art that was influenced by his philosophy and life.  He was quite the rebel and anti-establishment, which people attribute to inspiring art that broke some long standing artistic traditions.

They had art from original set-designs for the Parisian Opera.  The set-designs were intricately painted oils on cut-boards that were put together to form a 3d diorama of the conceived set.  We liked this a lot.

There was an exhibit on Militant Catholic Art which was also really interesting.  For a time, France was extremely Catholic and commissioned lots of religious works that were meant to convey the power and splendor of the church/religion.  The exhibit had all of the sketches leading up to the final products (sometimes murals, paintings, or sculptures) and explained what decisions and symbolism influenced the final piece.

They also had an exhibit on the artist who did most of the work for the Sacred Heart Basilica.  It was interesting seeing his studies for the perspective mural of Jesus on the dome.

We were there forever, we got very tired:

They had a cafe that was very essential. I won't tell you how much the espresso was, but know it was worth it because it allowed us to keep on exploring the collection.

 Overview of the main room of the collection.  Can you imagine all of the trains?

Afterwards we went for a walk.  I spotted my next target, the Grand Palace (Gran Palais):