Paris day 4: the Musée d'Orsay

Tuesday the 7th

Time for another major museum! Today's destination was the Musée d'Orsay, the fabulous former train station that now houses lots of late 19th- and early 20th-century paintings and sculpture:

Like the Tate Modern, the building alone is worth the visit:

Unlike another major Paris museum that we managed to navigate largely by trial and error, the Orsay is smaller and less labyrinthine (not to mention well-signed), and it was easy to find exhibits of interest. One group of rooms featured Art Nouveau, a long-time favorite of mine, and I was thrilled to find additions to my chair collection (illustrated in the British Museum post). Here are the whimsical:

The more stern Northern European:

and the knobby recliner:

Of course the paintings were fun too. Here's a view of Westminster that we didn't catch when we were in London:

We finally headed out, crossed the Seine, and ambled to the Grand Palais, home of (among other things) the Palace of Discovery, a science museum. With demonstrations and signage only in French, it wasn't very accessible to us, except for an interactive "Playing With Light" room that did googly things with cameras, projections, and sensors in the floor. But Dan was impressed nonetheless; the caption on this photo should be "Wow, you can see that those French kings really knew their science."

All in all, a very good day.