What IS He Thinking?

Saturday. Our plan was to visit the Musée d'Orsay, the other big art museum in Paris. Its collection starts where The Louvre finishes.

As per the previous morning, we went to Paul for breakfast, and in addition to what we had yesterday, we each got a lovely quiche lorraine as well. However, the "vache stupide" at the shop only gave us one vennoise chocolat. Quelle horreur! Oh well, we were halfway to the museum when we realised, so didn't bother going back.

We arrived at the museum to find a huge bloody queue outside and it was half as long again on the inside. Merde! It was such a cold and windy day we decided to give it a miss rather than stand outside for a couple of hours, but took some pictures of the statues outside. We found out later in the day we could have got a three day Paris Museum Pass that avoids all those queues. Zut alors! So that will be a must for our next visit.

So, we pulled out our guide book to see what else was in the area. Scott found the Rodin Museum not far away, were we would be able to see The Thinker and The Kiss along with lots of other of his works.

Well, I'm so glad we went there instead! The museum is set on the grounds of Rodin's home and there's a lovely garden with many of his sculptures dotted around the grounds. It is well worth a visit - the garden is an oasis of calm in such a bustling city and the sculptures are thoughtfully placed. Scooter went nuts with the camera and took some lovely, well composed pictures.

Of course, we saw The Thinker - or "Le Penseur" which is perched upon a plinth about 15 feet high. Deep in thought, probably thinking "how do I get down from here" or "I wish those pigeons would stop crapping on my head". It is the orginal as well, there have been many casts send around the world, but this is the real thing.

After seeing everything in the garden including the magnificent Gates of Hell, we had our lunch, then wandered inside the museum where there's even more scultures, and studies, including the Kiss, which is beautiful. Its not the first time I've seen it however, it paid a vist to the Tate Britain some years ago. There's a number of paintings in the museum as well including some Monets as well.

I cannot recommend a visit to this museum highly enough. Scooter has just told me that there's a major Rodin exhibition coming to London's Royal Academy of the Arts later this year! How annoying....but I suppose we had the better experience seeing them in Paris without the giant crowds that are sure to flock to London for this show.

Afterwards, we went back to the flat, met up with Andrew and the three of us went to the Moose Bar as Andrew was keen to sample his first poutine. So all three of us ordered one with a pint (well, a half litre - France is metric after all) to wash it all down. It was really good too and Andrew agreed.

We had forgotten the last few matches of the Six Nations Rugby was on, and the pub was packed. We couldn't really see the telly that well, so decided to try a couple of other English pubs, but they were all packed as well. Luckily Andrew knew of The Highlander - a Scottish themed pub a short walk away. So glad we went there, it wasn't too busy, so we put our butts on our stools and watched two matches with the customers there and proceeded to get rather tipsy in the process. The bartender was Irish and was wearing a kilt and face paint - was quite a laugh.

After the matches, we left, and went out for dinner with Ash. I wasn't too hungry to start as we'd eaten our poutine quite late in the day, but I was certainly hungry by the time mine and Scooter's food arrived - they had forgotten our order. So Ash and Andrew were finished by the time we got our dinner. The waiter however, was extremely apologetic and gave us all a free glass of wine, so at least that's something.

We treated them to dinner for putting us up, then went to the Marais for a few drinks.

The visit to the Rodin Museum will stay with me as one of my favourite days out for a very long time.