BUSY MONDAY - OCTOBER 13.

After our breakfast - the usual - cafe creme and croissant, Charlie and Geoff wandered off to IPG, and I walked to the Musee d'Orangerie.  It's about a half hour walk from Geoff's condo.  From the Hotel de Ville, past the Louvre, through the Tuileries and into the museum.  The Tuileries is a lovely garden.  With ponds, trees, and works of art.

A view of the Louvre on my way to the Musee Orangerie

A pond in the Tuileries

Another pond

  The main focus of the museum is Monet.  There are two very large circular rooms with Monet's lily ponds surrounding you as you walk in.  Of the two, one of the sets of paintings is only of the ponds, the other set has trees and the ponds.  I like the second one better.

Downstairs, there are other exhibits.  They had an exposition of Edvard Bovard. I had never seen his work before, but it was quite nice.  The other section downstairs was the collection of an artist/art dealer  who's name I've forgotten.  The best parts of his collection were some lovely Renoirs and many beautiful pieces of African art.

The photos below are from my walk toward the Cluny

Working on a sculpture

Constructing a sculpture in the Tuileries

Modern sculptures in the Tuileries

A gardener - goat

After my tour, I retraced my steps and went back to the Cluny museum to get a children's book about castles in French.  Tough book - I should stick to Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar.  I then wound my way around until I found the restaurant that Harsha and Charlie were to meet me.  A southern Indian place.  We had lunch, and then went a few doors down to find Shakespeare and Company.  It's basically an English book store, but apparently, invites authors (or presumed authors) to spend the night.  Upstairs in this place is a piano, a bed, and an ancient typewriter - with walls lined with many books.  We were on the left bank, with views of Notre Dame - so we took a photo.

I think this one came out surprisingly well!

Charlie and I walked back to Geoff's.  After a brief rest, he and I wandered over to the Pompidou Centre to see the modern art on display there.  It was one of the few museum's in the area I'd never been to before - and only a couple of blocks from Geoff's.  There are two floors with lots of area and lots of works of art.  The lower of the two floors is very modern - constructions, videos, music - with an emphasis that war is bad - people die - wealthy countries wage war - kind of dull.  The top floor had modern and impressionistic art which was excellent.

Charlie's favorite painting from the Pompidou Centre - it's titled "The Lecture"

View from the top of the Pompidou Centre

After the museum tour we took another escalator ride to the very top of the place and were treated to wonderful views of Paris.  I'd like to do this visit on another day when I haven't spent all morning tromping through museum's.  We were a bit pooped.

Geoff made fish.  Dinner was very nice.  To bed.