Thursday was chock full, with a morning visit to the opulent Palais Garnier (the Paris Opera, built between 1861 and 1875 at the request of Emperor Napoleon III) and then an afternoon trip to the Musee d’Orsay.
Leaving the Palais Garnier, we walked through Place Vendome and saw Napoleon’s commemorative column about the Battle of Austerlitz. (And incidentally, the Hotel Bataille de Frances at 1 Place Vendome where the Republic of Texas had its French Embassy.)
We then crossed over the Seine on the pont de Solférino footbridge, taking a moment to note the many thousands of padlocks which adorn the bridge. (This is a new-ish tradition in Paris, for couples to signify their love for each other with a padlock on a bridge.)
Musee d’Orsay is an amazing art museum located in a 19th century train station.
we stopped at a Christmas market and got crepes, tres delicious!
The sun came out in the afternoon and shed it’s legendary light on Paris.
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Cultural appropriation! Napoleon’s column looks exactly like Trajan’s Column in Rome!
The Opera temple is amazing. Can’t you just hear the “ah ah ah ah ah!” from the Queen of the Night’s aria from The Magic Flute?
The clock at Orsay may be a leftover from the time when the building was a train station.
Amazing seeing that lock bridge! In 2014 when Cody and I went that had just dismantled the original “love locks” by removing all the fencing, and replacing it with fencing that would prevent the massive amount of locks. Apparently the weight was so much that it was making the city nervous that the bridge would fail. The new bridge had just been installed when we went, but already had dozens of locks on it. Seeing it now is awesome- apparently love will prevail, and people will keep stacking up locks even on a lock-proof fence.