Catching up... Saturday, last day in Paris

I had the entire day Saturday in Paris and I was determined to go until my feet completely gave out.

I started the day by walking towards the Rodin Museum. On the way I passed the Hotel des Invalides and Musée de l'Armée (Army Museum). I wandered around the outside of those and into the gift shop. They had a nice coffee table book of Paris from the air, low level aerial photos. I almost bought it but really didn't want to lug it around all day.

The Musée Rodin was great! Most of the sculptures are outdoors. I first saw his work (other than "The Thinker" which everyone knows) at one of the Smithsonians in Washington D.C., maybe 20 years ago. His enormous "Gates of Hell" sculpture will give you nightmares if you look at it too long. Standing next to "Bourgeois de Calais", I suddenly felt like they were alive, like street performers striking a pose.

From near the Musée Rodin grabbed a Metro north a couple of stops to the Place de la Concorde. If I've kept it all sorted out correctly, the commentary from the tour boat said that the guillotines were set up here during the French Revolution.

After a wander around the Place de la Concorde, another short Metro ride to the Louvre. I had been in the square in the center of the Louvre and seen the glass pyramids on my previous trip to Paris so this time I went directly in to the museum from the Metro station. I decided that not only was there no way to see a significant fraction of the Louvre there wasn't even any way I'd see the highlights. So I just picked a gallery entrance more or less at random from the museum map. I went thru the ancient Egyptian exhibit, a little of the exhibit from the rest of the ancient Middle East and ended in a gallery of sculptures by French artists. That's where my camera battery gave out. I took that as a sign that I should take a break and caught the Metro back to my hotel.