Delicate Delights

As the weather began to cool down I met up again with Sophie and Joanna on Thursday morning to wander around once again. We stopped first at the Pompidou, the modern art museum in the fourth district near Les Halles. It's such a strange building. All the pipes and infrastructure skelaton on the outside, giving it a modern look to reflect the modern art inside.

 

 Continuing on our walk we passed by the famous Paris Plages: man made beaches they set up along the Seine so that Parisians have a chance to enjoy the luxury of sunbathing on sand while being away from the actual coast. It's pretty torturous though in my opinion, since you can't actually go swimming after you've laid out there for a while... Maybe that's just me though. Still, it's a nice place to lounge around.

 Since walking entices hunger, we soon wandered into a Patisserie that housed, yes, if you've read my blog posts from last summer you've guessed it: Macarons! Lots of them!

 They even had them in combination with another of my favorite things:

 But we didn't stop there... Sophie had a new treat in mind. Eclairs. Not just any eclairs. Top knoch, high end, extremely fancy eclairs. Now, I've always loved the traditional chocolate on top, cream in the middle, but these were something else.

Ranging from dark chocolate and speculoos, to lemon cream and pecan pie, it's no surprise that these eclairs have become a new fancy fad in the pastry world. And of course the tasted exactly like they looked. Beautiful, light, sweet.

 They even had baguette ones!
 After much debate we finally narrowed down three to try. Passion fruit with raspberry, salted caramel and strawberry with pistachio.

After that overload of goodness, I eventually made it back to the apartment where Isabelle and I decided to venture out and do some sightseeing. We tried to go to the catacombs, but got there right at 4 as they were closing the doors. But no matter! We went to the museum of Orsay instead! 
The setup of the museum is really amazing. It's in an old train station, and has it's exhibition of statues running down the length of it. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but saw quite a bit of impressionist paintings, including some of my favorite Rodin, Monet and Renoir works.

Since being bitten by the museum bug, Friday started with an excursion to the Orangerie, a museum in the Tuileries Gardens. More of a gallery, the Orangerie houses impressionist and post-impressioinist paintings, putting it pretty high on my list of favorites. What completely won me over are its two oval, white, sky-lit chambers with a massive Monet waterlilys painting stretching across each of the rooms' four walls. Again, no pictures were allowed, but it was really breathtaking.
At two, Isabelle and I met up with K-Rae and a group of her students (she works with and teaches in a program for study abroad students here in Paris) at the Palais du Luxembourg, the palace once lived in by Marie de Médicis which now houses the Paris Senate. K-Rae had organized a tour for her students and I luckily got to tag along.
The first room we went in was the Salon du livre d'or, where the only remaining original moldings, paintings, wall panels, etc, from when the Palace was Marie de Médicis living quarters have been assembled.The ceiling displayed a scene of Marie being offered a bundle of arrows, a sign of peace in times of war. Surrounding the portrait are eight female oracles.

Along the top of the wall there are paintings of putti, winged babies who die before they are baptized and are in limbo. I would love to know what the painter was thinking when painting some of them-

And naturally, the room had a great view of the jardins du luxembourg.

On our way to the second floor, we were held back by a large crate delivery that was being unloaded at the foot of the stairs. After many guesses on what it could be, low and behold Napoleon's throne was taken out of the large wooden box and carried right past us. Apparently it had been on exhibition in a museum and was returning to its rightful place in the salle de conference.

The rest of the tour was great. We got a full history of the senate chamber while sitting in the seats of the very senate members. I just happened to take a seat where two honored members had once sat (indicated by gold medallions), one of which was Victor Schoelcher, the man responsible for abolishing slavery in France in 1848.

Salle de conference

Napoleon's Throne in its'  rightful spot in the salle de conference

The Senate library-My favorite room

Once the tour was over we headed home, put our feet up and took a nap. Or almost took a nap. Before we could fall asleep fully Caroline came over again with her friend Brenda and the four of us went to dinner, followed by a walk around Les Halles.

A relaxing but great way to end the hot, busy day.