My parents left in the wee hours of the morning for a little jaunt in Nantes (my step mum has relatives down there) and so we were left to our own devices.

Seeing that we missed out on climbing the Notre-Dame towers, I thought we could do that and then go to Musee d’Orsay because I loved it last time I went there, but didn’t really have that much time to properly check it out… plus some errands on the side like booking a cab to take us to the airport, mailing postcards, and visiting Pierre Herme’s patisserie. *ahem* haha

The booking of the cab took much longer than expected, mainly because the voice prompts were all in French and all I know is the usual very basic conversation words/phrases and the 2 ever useful phrases: Parle vous anglais? and Je ne sais pas. Thankfully I managed to get hold of an actual English-speaking operator (sucks being only fluent in one language! And double sucks when you’re not linguistically talented *sighs*) and finally confirmed a booking for the next morning.

The line for the towers is actually outside, running down the side of the church – silly me went into the church trying to look for it – and it was also pretty long. I think we waited for about 30-40 minutes in the windy coldness, during which I looked up…

… before we were tramping our way up the spiral staircase to the top.

I was kind of wheezing before long and my butt muscles were strangely burning (hahah TMI maybe? XD teehee), but was pleasantly surprised to find that we reached the top rather quickly. It was a strange feeling, as I remember the last time I climbed this tower it felt like forever and I’m quite sure I took mini-breaks because I got so out of breath!

Anywho, I know you just wanna see photos from the top =P

I always find scaffolding covers amusing – it’s like, this is what the building is suppose to look like under here, sooo here’s a drawn and printed version of it! I think of it as a kind of loading notification for buildings, like the ones you get when you’re waiting for a photo to load on Facebook. hahaha

I’m quite sure everyone’s seen this character, he’s one of the famous gargoyles to adorn Notre-Dame and I think he looks rather cute, what with that pose and cheeky tongue sticking out. hehe Off in the distance, you can see Sacre-Coeur!

Some less cute gargoyles…

And yes, I think one of them is eating a cat.

Climbing down the tower was exactly as I remembered it: looong and windy. It honestly felt longer than us walking up, which was really weird. By the time we reached the ground, we both weren’t feeling too good. hahah

Notre-Dame from the back:

We were feeling a bit peckish and while my brother had a pre-made hot dog (which they just reheated in the grill and added some sauce), I had the sweet chocolate, banana crepe…

Yuuuummmmm…

We ambled our way to Musee d’Orsay – one of my favourite museums. While I think most museums in Europe were previously aristocrats’ mansions and royal palaces, Musee d’Orsay use to be a train station! I fancy that you can see that with the structure of the building and the massive clock (which I got obsessed about and took a billion photos of)…

They really have expanded their collection from last time I was here – I got a bit overwhelmed and didn’t quite know where to start! Haha… Ended up deciding to work my way from the top to the bottom.

My brother got all huffy at me because he didn’t want to go to the museum, wanting to go home instead, because of his aching heels. I told him to sit down some where comfy and to wait for me to do the round. He adamantly refused, citing that f he were to do that, goodness knows when I’ll come back for him. Damn it… He had a point. So I ended up kind of rushing through Musee d’Orsay… again… just like last time… haha

As we walked into the museum, we were stared down by an impressive lion…

Our first stop was the Impressionists (including Neo-impressionsm) on the top floor…

I’ve always heard about Chat Noir, but I wasn’t too sure what it was all about. So, much to my brother’s suffering, we went downstairs to check it out. Seeing the displays made so much sense! There was no time to read the lengthy text accompanying some of the artwork, sadly enough, but basically it’s shadow puppetry, background included…

When we wandered even further downstairs, we somehow stumbled across the Hall of Festivities…

Both my brother and I were struck by how ornate and opulent the hall was, placing images of grand balls, rustling of gowns, fluttering of fans, and strains of “civilised” music. We both were sitting on the floor, taking it all in, when a guard/curator spied us and motioned for us to get up. Oopsy.

I realised something as I wandered (and wondered… *boom tish* lol.. ah I’m so lame hehe) through the museum: I adore sculptures. (Wait, have I already declared that? Terrible sense of deja vu O_O)

This sculpture was in the Hall of Festivities and I like how impish she looks – though admittedly her hair is a bit freaky at the same time.

It wasn’t the man on the winged lion’s back that arrested my attention, it was the winged lion itself, with its fierce almost-snarl and paw on an “evangile” scroll (whatever that was).

A stately (but naked) woman holding out a tiny (clothed) female… interesting – I would have figured it’d be the other way for some reason. And then I wonder WHY is she holding a little person? O_o

These two massive reliefs were placed back-to-back and rather had a “whoa” effect… towering over you with the frozen struggle between the hunter and the hunted.

I didn’t know this, but The Thinker was actually part of The Door of … and not a solitary sculpture.

I was going to put up more stuff from the museum, but I kind of got bored putting them on here – which I thought was a clear indication that it would also bore you terribly, so I’ll just cut to the end =P

One of the sculptures that really stayed with me from the last visit was of this young lady demurely sitting down, looking at somewhere far away. I tried to commit the statue’s name and artist to memory, but we all know my memory’s worse than a goldfish. So after all these years of wondering what it was, I’ve finally found out:

Jeanne d’Arc a Domremy by Henri Chapu

I wanted to go to Pierre Hermes after visiting the museum, but my brother was whinging and generally being grumpy pants so much that I didn’t think even the best macaroons in the world would taste any good.

So we went home.

*SIGHS*

Seeing that I was mostly navigating around Paris, we were a bit worried about our parents being able to get back home without getting too lost (I even had written very succinct and precise notes lol).

They actually came home about 30 minutes after their ETA, so we were pretty worried haha

Rome tomorrow!!! Woohoo!!!

(… well… in the sense of this time-line and not the real-time time line we’re living in haha)