Photo Shoot, Musee d’Orsay and Musee de l’Armee

The view from Trocadero <3

                          

We got up early for our photo shoot with Kevin of l’Amour de Paris. This is the company our friend Stacy started, and she took all of the other photos from Paris that we have hanging on our gallery wall in our house. We were excited to do a shoot at the Eiffel Tower with our family at this age!

I was a little anxious about getting ready and being there on time, but we arrived a few minutes early, ready to go. The shoot was very cold, but very fun, and he got REALLY beautiful photos (I will post them on another post!). It was a highlight of the trip for all of us! We also got to say hello to Doug, who co-owns the company with his wife, CheyAnne.

One of my favorite photos (outside of the shoot) from the whole trip!

After our shoot, we wanted to get crepes—I used to get crepes at a stand near the Trocadero Plaza, but it wasn’t there anymore. So we were on the hunt for crepes all day. We Ubered back to our hotel so Felicity and I could change into warmer clothes, made lunchboxes, and then we headed right back out to get to Musee d’Orsay via Uber. 

Musee d’Orsay is my favorite museum in Paris. I love that it used to be a train station. The architecture is so neat, and I LOVE the two big clocks—one of which overlooks the Seine. They remind me of the movie Hugo. 

Miniature model of Garnier Opera House

Miniature of Garnier Opera House

Felicity loved this Degas sculpture

Van Gogh self portrait

The museum has a lot of great Impressionist art by Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Van Gogh, plus some interesting sculptures, including some by Rodin. 

Also, I like this museum because it feels like a manageable size. We didn’t see all of it, but I felt like we saw most of it in 2-3 hours. This visit it was very crowded—again I picked the wrong day because the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays so a lot of people go to this museum. I did not have to wait in line very long though, because we had a Paris Museum Pass. But the Van Gogh room was more crowded than when we went to see Mona Lisa! 

We perused most of the museum, then ate at the cafe on the second floor. The walls and ceiling were very fancy, and the chairs were a very cool acrylic. We had sandwiches and the baguette was excellent :-). 

The cafe on the second floor. So beautiful!

large baguette haha

Rodin. The sculptures at Musee d'Orsay are what I like the most.

Rodin's Gates of Hell

The kids brought their digital cameras

this is such a cool sculpture!

Next, we walked to Musee de l’Armee, the French Army Museum (and Napoleon’s tomb). We have been here twice before and it is EXTENSIVE and in the past, we ran out of time (the first time years ago, we got there too late to see the exhibits at all!), so we skipped the armory and early war artifacts and went straight to the two World Wars area. Even so, the World War I and II exhibits are very detailed and we took our time going through them. I read a lot of the captions out loud to the family.

Afterward we went to Napoleon’s tomb, at the same site. We used Rick Steves’ audio guide and book to navigate.  

Napoleon's tomb

The tomb of Foch

When we were done there, we walked back to the apartment. We got crepes down the street at a place called Mac & Tea, and they were so good. 

Very tired from two full days of seeing sites and walking, we stopped by Franprix (a small grocery store) to get a few things for dinner, and an American man heard us talking and pointed out some item for us, and we also ran into a Canadian lady who is a retired flight attendant, with her dog. She was visiting Paris as she often does, for a month. We had a nice chat! 

We had dinner with a cheese plate, and then watched one more movie together. The next day we went to Marche President Wilson!