Paris Day 4 Notre Dame

We walked to Notre Dame cathedral, going first into their new Crypt archaeological display. This reminded me a bit of the one we saw at Bath in England. That is, an example of a place finding and showing its roots as a Roman settlement - all from fragments of stones reworked and reused over the centuries. Quite a jigsaw puzzle. Then we went into the cathedral itself. While it looks like a mess of flying buttresses on the outside, inside it is simply spacious. The upper vaults are so high that the stained glass designs there are lost in the distance. In other respects it's quite modest, with very few noble entombments cluttering the side chapels. We walked up to the Musee d'Orsay and went straight to level 5 for lunch. Going through the galleries we played spot the familiar painting - not just because some are mega-famous but because we saw them when they were loaned to the NGA in Canberra a few years ago. I was keen to check out some artists whose work I have liked but seen little of. For two of these - Moreau and Courbet seeing more was disappointing. Oh well. On the other hand, some of the Bouguereau was interestingly different to the ones that make it into printed annual calendars. Oh, they also had lots of Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin, Manet, Renoir etc that people were crowding around. We also saw so many Rodin sculptures there it seemed superfluous to go out to the Rodin museum so we decided to just stay at the d'Orsay a bit longer before taking the Metro back to the apartment. For the evening we went back to Sainte Chapelle for a violin+harpsichord concert. First time I've heard Bach and Vivaldi played in a building older than the music! Quite something to watch the outside daylight fading through the high walls of stained glass. Performance was itself stunning - violinist Paul Rouger soaring and crunching through a chaconne by Vitali with virtuoso form. We felt compelled to buy the CD of him performing it, and were embarrassed to be a couple of Euros short of the set price. He magnanimously waived the difference as no issue.