And this one was all about the culture. It was the day I had reserved for going to the Musee D'Orsay. I walked from Montmartre, which took me past quite a few Paris landmarks including the Place Vendome
and perhaps these days just as culturally significant, Louis Vuitton!
It was hot, and there was a long queue for tickets at the Musee d'Orsay which was absolutely rammed with people and has THE most confusing layout I have ever come across in a National Gallery. I'm not saying there aren't more confusing places, I'm just saying I haven't encountered one yet. The noise was appalling too.
I started off with a gallery plan and a coffee, and I had to queue for about 10 minutes just to get into the cafe! which was also seething. The mini beignets were great though.
Right at the top of the tallest part of the building is the clock face and you can get a wonderful view of Paris from behind it. If you want one that doesn't have a 1001 other tourists taking pictures of one another in front of it though, you have to be a) very patient and b) very quick off the mark. Which is why this isn't a brilliant picture, but has the benefit over the other one I managed to snatch of not having a tourist wander carelessly into shot.
In the evening we went to the Paris Opera and saw the weirdest Boheme I have ever encountered. It was set on a dying space ship and it was unclear quite how many of the characters in it were actually real, or simply hallucinatory projections of Rodolfo. It was clever, didn't quite hang together, and I found it singularly disturbing. Our seats were a long way up and I found it a bit vertiginous, but at least I have now been to the Paris Opera and it is quite posh and modern inside.
...a spaceship??
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