Paris, Je T'aime. {Day Six}

"Paris is the city of love,

even for the birds.” 

― Samantha Schutz, I Don't Want To Be Crazy

Today was extremely rainy. So much so, that though I carried my (hefty-but-generally-worth-it) camera, I didn't snap a single picture with it until the very end of the day. Not much frustrates me in life...(; 

We did take the metro (and found the connecting one with pas de problème) to Mouffetard, but found it so rainy we had to pass on the strolling/meandering. Eventually, we ducked into a little restaurant for a cup of coffee; the two younger girls preferred hot chocolate- which we all admitted was unlike anything we had ever tasted (excepting my recipe for Aztec hot chocolate, which does have many more spices, cayenne pepper one of them). This chocolate was delicious- definitely more on the sweeter side, but tres, tres rich. 

While in the café, we happened to see two teenage boys dash past "with an extra purse," as my mum put it. Apparently, rainy days with few people on the street are good days for pickpockets. 

 

After figuring out exactly where we were now headed, we took the metro to Musee L'Orangerie. This museum, located near the Luxembourg Garden, was actually once a greenhouse, as we learned from our museum tour guide, a lovely older lady who really knew how to paint a picture in your mind...using words. We stood in the rotunda area as she told us how Monet, when he gave this set of water-lilly paintings to France, also gave a list of conditions, including a round room with no angles; he picked this greenhouse himself as the perfect spot, but never "finished" the paintings with his signature because he was his own worst critic. I almost cried; I did feel a lump come into my throat when she said that you could see Monet himself looking at you through the clouds of one of the paintings, and how she liked to think that was his signature. 

"There used to be a young girl who came in here to try to emulate the paintings," she told us, with her soft, whispering British tones. "And she always said, 'I want people to listen to the music of the water-lillies.'" 

There was more we did this afternoon; we went through many more of the beautiful works in the museum, but my heart was with the painter, standing on his bridge near the water which reminded him of his mother...

............