What better place to go than L’Orangerie after trip to Giverny?
It’s the second to last week. I can already feel the time crunch. So everything from here on out is about maximizing our time (awake) in Paris. That means actually waking up and getting out of the house before 10 am!
On Monday, we started off at my favorite Rue Montorgueil, where there is an Exki, the European take-out friendly version of Lemonade, if you will, full of prepackaged salads and sandwiches as well as warm quiches, fresh pies, pastries, and coffee. With free wifi and a friendly helpful staff, it’s my work place of choice. Not quite the same ambiance as your go-to LA café but it’s an affordable place where I can linger so I wasn’t complaining!
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After getting some work done, we headed over to Musée de L’Orangerie, which was a short métro ride to Concorde, on the far side of the Tuileries.
This little museum houses Monet’s famous Nymphéas, water lillies murals, as well as a collection of other impressionist works by Cézanne, Matisse, Renoir and more. As the name indicates, it was originally an “orangerie” or a green house for orange trees, built in the 19th century. Since then, it has undergone renovations, under Monet’s direction, to become the museum it is today.
With our lovely student IDs, we had free admission, but still had to wait in line for quite some time while the pre-order ticket and Paris Pass line.
Inside, in oval shaped rooms lit by natural light, the murals spanned the round walls. These murals were mounted on to the walls after Monet’s death and have been housed here since 1927.
No photo can do the paintings justice, especially because of the sheer length of the works that make it hard to capture (especially with the small crowds admiring the works in each room).
Downstairs, there is a small collection of other impressionist works mounted on intensely colored walls. From Renoir to Picasso, a lot of these works are from a private collection donated to the museum.
And of course, nestled at the middle level is a lovely little gift shop full of art books, calendars, cards, you name it!
[one_half padding=”0 2px 0 0″]As a relatively small museum, this is a perfect place to go before class. Afterwards, we walked over towards Madeleine and stopped by Ladurée for a birthday surprise. [/one_half]
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After class, I cooked Chinese food for my host family. We decided it would be fun to share cultures through food, the best way of exchanging cultures, in my opinion. However, cooking in a foreign kitchen with French ingredients was much more of a challenge than I expected. I guess it forced my to localize, however, so it worked out in the end.
Tuesday was shopping day. After checking out Eglise Saint-Eustache in the morning, it was off to Les Halles and Rue de Rivoli for a shopping spree.
Saint-Eustache was a much more quiet and underrated church. They were filming something inside at the time, but visitors were still allowed to walk around the outer part. There was probably no more than 10 visitors at the time, which was really cool compared to the hundreds that go through Notre Dame every minute.
After shopping, we headed over to Ile Saint Louis for lunch. We basically sat down at the first café we saw and got some coffee and omelettes (served with fries). Sometimes I miss the color in California food…but you know, the yellow diet is cool too, I guess.
A NIGHT OUT IN THE CITY >> seven hour marathon
So after class, we had the brilliant idea of spending a whole night out. Kind of one of those things you just have to do…plus we wanted to see the sunrise. We decided that the only way to survive would be to get out as late as possible (considering the last métro runs between 12:30 and 1 am) and catch the earliest métro (at around 5 am). Of course, this proved easier said than done.
After touching base at Hôtel de Ville, we wandered towards Latin Quarter in hopes of finding some way to kill time. After some fruitless wandering, we sat down at a random café for drinks, pictured below with the sad paper cup of complementary popcorn we were given.
The highlight of our two hours spent there? People watching. Watching the waiter balance sparklers with every drink, reading the R-rated drink menu, watching the girls at the table in front of us act crazy while the apparent birthday girl flaunted a flashy pirate costume, and trying not to listen to the loud Americans conversing next to us (by the time we left, I basically knew their life stories).
Maybe it was because it was a Tuesday night, maybe Parisians just like to retire early. But either way it did not take us long to realize that Paris is not a night city. After a while, all of the lights went away, and Notre Dame is creepy looming silently in the dark.
When we weren’t watching time tick by, we were walking. From Hôtel de Ville to Latin Quarter, up to the Marais, back to the Latin Quarter, and then finally, in a leap of hope, we yelped what seemed to be the only place open after 1 am…and unfortunately, it was located near Moulin Rouge.
We had nothing better to do. An hour and 4 kilometers later, we finally made it to this nighttime oasis. It seemed like many other people figured out this was the place to be as well.
Clichy’s Tavern is open until 5 am and serves the usual fare at a fair price. We opted for crêpes…which tasted amazing…maybe because they were, maybe because it was 4 am and we had been walking for an hour.
We said hello to the Moulin Rouge and awkwardly walked through the red light district right before the break of dawn. It was unusually calm, quiet and felt relatively safe.
After waiting for the unusually crowded first métro, we made our way to Pont Alexandre III.
Then came the biggest disappointment of my trip.
There was no sunrise.
Thank you, clouds.
So there I was, standing on the most beautiful bridge, exhausted, desperate, and kind of pissed.
At least we could say we tried. 
We finally were able to come to terms with the fact that the sun stood us up and quietly made our way back home. Then it was a long nap and a late lunch before class.
Tl;dr: Spending a night out in Paris is quiet, rather boring unless you have some place in mind. Check the weather if you want to see the sunrise, enjoy having the city all to yourselves sans tourists AND natives. And crêpes taste good at 4 am.
– fin –