Next morning, all the others went to get the Free Tour of Paris, while I headed to the Musee D’ Orsay – the French National Museum – which houses French painting and sculpture from 1840s to 1910s. Again, needless to say, I was visiting it for Van Gogh. It also houses his French contemporaries, including his friend Gauguin, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro etc. Gauguin’s art comes a bit close to Van Gogh, but is nowhere as near to him. There was also Neo-Impressionist art, which is the evolving of Impressionism into an exact science, with studies made into the effect of putting opposite colors into the same frame, so as to accentuate the effect. I loved that too.
Due to the lack of time, I left the Orsay without visiting the first two floors – the sculptures. I headed from there to the Palace de Louvre, home to the famous museum. I joined here, the free tour which the others were taking. We walked along the famous 7km long road in Paris, which is the most interestin part of Paris. We saw no less than 8 different palaces, the Eiffel, the Arc de Troimphe, the Obelisk from Egypt, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, the cathedral at Sacre Monte etc. Totally worth it! We then headed to the Eiffel Tower – which he had not gone up – at 4 30. After a short wait, we were on the elevator to the top. And it was a breathtaking view on offer! We could see Paris from end to end, all of its glory, from a height of 58 stories! A tip: Carry your woolens to the top! Its real cold up there. Brr!
Tired as we were, we straggled up to the Louvre, and forced ourself into it, to see the one thing we knew inside, the Mona Lisa. Friday evenings offer a free entry to students, and that was the deciding factor for the visit. I also managed to crawl and see a few Greek, Roman, Carthage-ian sculpture. I saw a few Renaissance furniture too, before it was closing time. I must say that I could relate more to the Orsay than to the Louvre. Again, it must be said that it is huge, and probably impossible to see the entire museum with anything less than 3 days in hand.
On the way back to the hostel, we took the wrong metro, had to get off, and climb on another one back, and we were as dead as logs by the time we reached the hostel. We had to leave early next morning, and we did not even bother to look at the directions to the next hostel, which then caused a lot of pain in Chamonix.
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