Final Day of Museum blitz

We knew when we came here that there were some "must-see" museums for us, and we took advantage of The Paris Museum Pass to save time and money.  Our version of the pass was good for four days and those four days ended today.  The accumulated wear on our feet over the past four days combined with our plan to go dancing tonight (see below and tomorrow) meant that we quit early.  You get only the L'Orangerie and the Pompidou Center today.

In the good old days, instead of your basic aerosol deodorant to freshen up the inside of your 500,000 square foot home, you grew orange trees.  And since it was also quite an exotic food for Europe during this period, your social rank determined how many sections of orange you were allocated.

The orangerie associated with the Louvre has served several purposes since the Louvre was last used as a residence, but has recently found an ideal application: it houses the magnum opus of Claude Monet, The Water Lilies.  I'll let the art experts debate whether this is one piece of work or eight;  I just know that in the midst of it, in either of the two rooms holding four panels of the work, the viewer is hard put to avoid a feeling of calm and serenity induced by the soft impression of lilies crafted by the artist, even when his eyesight was nearly gone.

We capped our blitz with an unforgettable building, the Pompidou Center, where is housed a collection of modern art.  To be honest, modern art is not high on our list.  The building itself is interesting, though.  As an engineer and sometime project planner and manager, I would have expected them to remember that it needed an escalator before they built it, so it wouldn't have to be added on to the outside as an afterthought.

A view of the building that you won't get from most guidebooks is from the back, continuing the theme of parts of the building that modesty would have led most architects to hide.

So that's it.  The end of the four-day museum blitz.  As I said above, we quit early today to rest our feet for dancing tonight.  Those of you who know me find that a bit odd, since I am not much of a dancer.  But tomorrow is "Bastille Day", known to the French as La Féte National.  The festivities kick off tonight with public dances at most of the regional fire stations.  We have one nearby, and we're off to share the event with the locals.  Details and pics tomorrow!