What I Did in Paris (part 1)

What I Did in Paris (part 1)

Friday, June 6, 2014

When I was in third grade I moved to a new school which also meant a whole new slew of teachers. My art teacher was the coolest lady I had ever met. She had this dark, black, curly mess of hair and Tina Fey glasses. In retrospect she looks like what I pictured Professor Trelawney like, which was tons of shawls and super cool necklaces and bracelets. (To clarify, she was not weird like Trelawney at all.) In the fall we began studying a new artist: Claude Monet. She held up a print of one of his famous waterlilies and it was love at first sight. Mrs. Webber told us that this painting was housed at the d'Orsay Museum in Paris. My clumsy third-grade mouth tried to mimic the name and I promised myself that day that I would go to Paris and see the real thing.

It's been 15 years since I was in third grade and today I saw Monet's waterlilies in the d'Orsay. I could have spent all day looking at all of the art there. It was perfection itself. The d'Orsay is a refurbished train station. Again, utter perfection. We also saw the Louvre yesterday. The scale of this museum is so very impressive. One of my first thoughts was, "This is the perfect place to play hide-and-seek." So if I'm ever the curator of the Louvre, that's totally happening. 

I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the d'Orsay and only took a handful in the Louvre (which I'll post later) so I just pulled some of my favorites from the internet!