Paris (cont.)

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We spent Sunday taking in Paris' cultural side by visiting a number of museums. Our first stop was the Jeu de Paume, a contemporary art museum that currently has an exhibition by China's Ai Weiwei.

I thought that Mr. Ai's works were very interesting -- he's clearly both an artist and political activist. One of my favorite pieces (pictured below) is titled Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

Shortly before leaving the exhibit, we passed a window that offered a nice view of the Eiffel Tower as well as the obelisk in the Place de la Concord.

Next we visited the Musée de l'Orangerie, a gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings that is home to eight Nymphéas (Water Lilies) murals by Claude Monet. The murals are massive, with four each in two separate rooms. You're effectively surrounded by Monet's interpretations of his garden in Giverny. Here's a photo I found online shows a portion of one of the rooms.

While Monet's water lilies murals were definitely the highlight of the visit, there were also plenty of other interesting paintings by artists such as Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso and Renoir.

We finished our cultural tour with a visit to the Musée Rodin -- by far the most scenic of the three museums that we visited. It's basically a 18th century estate that has a number of Rodin's works in the house itself and throughout the massive garden. Here's a photo that I took from the garden.

I can't say that I'm very knowledgeable with respect to Rodin's work, though the one pictured below obviously rang a bell -- Le Penseur (The Thinker).

After finishing up at the Rodin museum, it was time to go back to the hotel to pick up our bags and then head to the train station. On the way we passed by the Presidential palace, which can't be a very happy place these days given Sarkozy's current spot in the polls. He's projected to come in 2nd in the first round of the presidential election today, which gets him to the second (and final) round but doesn't bode well for his ultimate chances for reelection.