We bid adieu to Avignon this morning, catching the high-speed train to Paris, and from there we took the Metro to our hotel, checking in a little after 2:00. We wanted to do some sightseeing, so we headed back out, got off the Metro at the Louvre, walked through the beautiful garden park out front (complete with Christmas village with carnival rides), and walked over to the Musee d’Orsay, where we bought tickets and stowed my backpack and got into the actual museum around 3:30.

I love the Musee d’Orsay. It might be my favorite art museum in the world. It is an old converted elegant train station, and the main floor and the two second floor wings running down the sides of the museum are dedicated to statues and sculptures. I’m a big fan of sculpture, so I wanted to visit all of the sculpture areas. When we got inside, Dubbs got excited about seeing a Degas special exhibit, so she went off to that while Mer and I looked around at the sculptures. They were pretty fantastic, and included several Rodins (I’m fond of his work). I really liked an art-deco-influenced sculpture of a polar bear, and a beautiful sculpture of a young woman called Aurora – the marble of her spread-out hair was so thin that light actually could shine through parts of it. Amazing stuff.

We still had time after seeing the two floors of sculpture, so we took a quick blitz to the top floor where the Impressionist art resides (as well as an overlook of the whole main floor of the museum). We then headed back downstairs, and used the last twenty minutes to look in galleries off to either side of the main hall, generally wandering to whatever caught my eye, which tended to be paintings that showed unusual or prominent lighting.  We were both struck by a painting called Jerusalem, by Jean-Léon Gérôme – it took us a few seconds to see that the foreground had the shadows of three crucifixions. It was a subtle and powerful work for us.

We met up with Dubbs, who had come from the art museum gift store, which is always dangerous for her. After eating supper at a restaurant across from the back side of the museum, we walked over to the Christmas village near the Louvre, where we spent time snacking on crepes and watching Paris play. It was a bit crowded, so we eventually walked over to the Champs-Elysees, toward the Arc de Triomphe, where we remembered a bigger and better Christmas fair from three years ago. It was a pretty walk, which is a good thing, since it turned out that the Christmas village was not there anymore – it seems to have been moved to the smaller version by the Louvre. Too bad.

And so ends our last evening in Paris. We head out on the long reverse trip, but happily without the three-hour train ride:  just Paris to Iceland to Toronto, then driving home. If all goes well, we should get home around 3:00 am Sunday (France time), a mere twenty-five hours in motion. That, along with several hundred dollars, of course, is the price we pay for European travel. We’ll have all of Sunday to get some recovery rest and to pet our kitties. We have had a grand trip with great weather, but I do look forward to my home routine. I love travel in Europe, but I miss my people, my routine, my bed, my normal food, and my kitties. Thanks for tagging along via the blog!