Reddingers In Paris & Prague: 7 hours of art and an excellent pot of tea

View down the Seine with the Musee d'Orsay on right

We were planning (you know Sarah) on going to Versailles today, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. Wind and rain prompted us to change our plans, good thing we learned how to be flexible from USAirways & AirFrance.

Had a leisurely breakfast at our quaint hotel and wandered over to the Musee d’Orsay (M’O). We decided to take our time and see as much as possible since we both love this collection. As it turns out, there were two exhibits.

The first one (at least in my mind) was the Bela Bartok exhibit. How exciting to hear the Hungarian Composer’s music while viewing Hungarian artwork from the same time period. The display itself was a piece of art. We throughly enjoyed this experience.

The museum is incredible and houses more impressionist artwork than one can imagine. Rodin statues are sprinkled throughout the M’O. It was so interesting to see how Monet’s work evolved into impressionism and then changed along with his declining vision. There is also an incredible Toulouse Lautrec stained glass piece made as a joint venture with Tiffany.

The second exhibit was called masculinity. It turned out to be an exhibit dedicated to the male nude in art from 1800 to the present. As we were reading about the exhibit it was mentioned that many exhibits dedicated to the development of the female nude in art have been shown across the world, while this is only the second exhibit dedicated to the male nude. The first room was quite interesting and had some fantastic pieces of art (Mercury by Pierre et Gilles). As we continued through this huge collection the quality of some of the art was certainly questionable (a painting of Eminem?) and the exhibit began to feel more like a way to push boundaries than a well thought out and tasteful exhibit.

Needless to say we didn’t spend a lot of time there and sincerely wished that the Toulouse Lautrec stained glass piece was the final image in our minds before leaving.

As some of you may know, we are obsessed with Mariage Freres tea so we decided to cross back over the Seine and visit one of their tea houses near the Louvre. Sarah had the Tibetan tea in preparation for her February trip to Nepal, I had the Sakura. It's so nice to be able to just sit (yes, I know -- . . .) and savor each little sip of tea which was perfectly brewed and presented in a large pot.

The waiter recommended the most decadent chocolate mouse, carmel, desert in a pool of berry sauce, wrapped in what appeared to be gold foil. Sarah of course, waited for me to try it first because the foil looked so real she wanted to see if I survived eating it. Thankfully it melted in my mouth so Sarah decided to venture a taste. Usually she's the more adventurous one with food, but when it comes to sweets… The food here is so delicious-- good thing we are walking so much.

After thoroughly enjoying our tea and dessert for a bit longer than we planned, we decided to visit the Louvre after dinner since it’s open until 9:45PM on Fridays.

Because the Louvre is so massive we decided to focus on the Greek and some some Egyptian artwork. It took us a little bit to figure out the maps, but eventually we picked up our audio guides (where I needed to leave my drivers license for the first time). In Russia, they kept our passports in exchange for the audio guide.

We attempted to use the Audio Guide, but didn’t have time to listen to the hour long instructions.