Getting kultured

In an effort to get myself out of the house, I decided to get off my butt and do something cultural this week. I ended up going to the Musée d'Orsay with my neighbor and 2 of the visiting Australians. Imagine my surprise when I discovered their ticket jeune included 30 or under - it was a nice little flashback to the days when I was under 25 and was able to take advantage of all the discounted entrance fees France offers.

For those of you who've never been there, the Musée d'Orsay used to be the Gare d'Orsay, or a train station serving the south of France. The building itself is absolutely massive (click here for a picture) - we got there at 2pm and only had time to explore about half of the museum before it closed. It also had really fabulous views of Paris in all directions.There was a Picasso/Manet exhibit entitled "le déjeuner sur l'herbe". While I thought it was great overall, I couldn't help but thinking that most of it reminded me of drawings done by the 4 year old I looked after this summer. Maybe it's just more proof that I have no clue what "art" is really about. Or maybe the 4 year old is just a Picasso in the making. lolAnother thing that surprised me was that there were so many people taking pictures, yet no guards walking around shouting "pas de photos s'il vous plaît". So that was nice - there was none of the "I'm pretending to write a text message but really I'm taking a picture with my camera phone" going on. I didn't even bring mine since I thought they'd be forbidding - so all of these pics are taken with my beloved blackberry. I also couldn't get over the number of ritzy old French women walking around - maybe it was "get in free day" if you were 60+ , wearing a fur coat and dripping in diamonds? What was even funnier was watching them try to take pictures of the art with their cell phones.... I particularly liked this guy and his cocker spaniel-like side burns. I think it would be a good candidate for replacing the Euro mullet. Who votes that the Justin starts the trend off?And even though the view wasn't really that different from chez moi, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the Eiffel Tower at sunset. Cuz you know you can never have too many of those...