Non-stop Paris

I've just finished 5 very full days of sightseeing in Paris. I booked a budget hotel on the internet with a lot of trepidation, but it is really good and I recommend the Hotel Nord et Champagne highly (for those of you looking for budget accommodation in Paris that is). My room is big, light and with a view of sorts of rooftops, but at least it's not looking at a wall. The bathroom is gorgeous too...

I bought a two day gallery pass and spent most of that time in galleries. I started at The Louvre...

 where of course you can see the Mona Lisa if you don't mind a bun fight...

I liked the photographic exhibition that mixed photos with faces from the collection with staff faces

Musee d'Orsay is also a favourite place. This time they have banned photography inside. They have a great collection of Impressionists

A new museum since I was last here is Musee du quai Branly. It's right next to the Eiffel Tower and is a museum of the culture of indigenous peoples. They were advertising Maori art prominently outside, but have quite a small collection in fact. It is an amazing building set in huge gardens, which had many NZ native plants in them. Inside it was very dark, just the work being lit, which I didn't find comfortable, but it is an impressive place. They had a very good exhibition of art of the Mayans on.

I always enjoy the Pompidou Centre, which has contemporary art from 1900 to the present.

My favourite gallery this time though was the Textile Museum, which should have been named at least the Fashion and Textile Museum, as it had an excellent exhibition of wearable art-type fashion. I couldn't take photos there unfortunately.

One very hot day I took a train about 45 minutes out of Paris to visit Monet's house and gardens at Giverny. I've never seen the lily ponds before and they are as lovely as I had imagined. The house was also very interesting. Monet had a great collection of Japanese prints, that he had collected as they were around ceramics being shipped to France.

Back in Paris I visited the Orangerie, which had two rooms with four huge Monet paintings in each

Beside gallery visits, I've walked from one side of Paris to the other, several times. I saw Paris plage, a beach that has been created for more than a kilometre alongside the Seine...

had a look at Notre Dame

wandered around the Latin Quarter where the Sorbonne and Pantheon and Boulevard Saint Michel are, and also climbed the Arc de Triomphe

I also did a bit of shopping. I think Galeries Lafayette is the prettiest shop in the world and it has a great view of the Opera from the roof terrace

Today, my fifth day, I ran out of steam and did an open-top bus tour, which took me to all the places I hadn't got to. We drove along the Champs Elysees, much easier than walking, and past the Eiffel Tour

Then I got the train over to Montmartre and walked up the hundreds of steps to the Sacre Coeur and fought with the tourists in the artists' square, before deciding that much as I love Paris, I have had enough for now. I get the train to Munich tomorrow, just for the night, then Innsbruck for three nights.