12/1/12

Day 4 in Paris

Today is another museum day, beginning with the Musee D'Orsay. Before heading to the museum though, we decided to actually go to the Moulin Rouge that night so we quickly headed just up the street and booked a table for that evening. The girl said that jeans weren't allowed, so we figured we could get some pants for Andrew at some point during the day. From there we headed off to the museum and on the way I finally found an Antique bookshop that actually had some reasonably priced books, so I picked up a book published in 1778 by Voltaire and then we continued on our way.

The Musee D'Orsay is a museum mainly focussed on Impressionist painters, so we spent hours wandering through this fantastic museum looking at the brilliant Monet's, Manet's, Cessane's and so on. The Museum also has some beautiful sculptures and, of course, Toluse Lautrec's work and Rodin's work as well. We had a lovely lunch in the upstairs restaurant - the building is a converted train station and the restaurant was located with one of the humungous clocks as part of the central wall. I had quiche lorraine and Andrew had the cesar salad, with tea as an accompianment. We were feeling a little under the weather as we'd stayed up very late the night before, so we didn't have wine with lunch that day.

After lunch we went and had a look at the next two floors of the museum where even more exceptional art is on display, incuding a giant sculpture of a polar bear which was awesome. There was a special exhibition on dedicated to the works and life of Oscar Wilde, which showcased the paintings and works that apparently inspired much of his writing. We ended up spending over four hours at the museum and we finally decided it might be a good idea to go shopping for pants.

What a shambles that was! We headed to Galleries Lafayette to discover hundreds of shirts, jeans and suits that needed to be tailored, but no plain, single black pants for sale! We then began a somewhat frantic search for a shop that sold basic clothes, heading back to UniClo, only to find that even they didn't have what we needed. We eventually found a C&A where Andrew finally found a well priced pair of well fitting black slacks, and we raced back to our hotel room to get changed. We had planned to get dinner before the show, which we had to arrive at by 8pm, but we were rushed for time, so we only had a chance to slip into some 'fancier' clothes and then go straight to the Moulin Rouge.

We arrived and were shown to our table. We were seated at a table of six (where there were currently no other guests) but we were thankfully placed at the end overlooking the ballustrade so we had an uniterrupted view of the stage. Part of the deal with show is that each person gets 1/2 a bottle of champagne. Our waiter intially gave us a small bottle of champagne and orange juice on the side, but obviously realised his mistake and so we also were given a large bottle between us as well. Because it was quite an expensive outing we felt obliged to drink as much of it as humanly possible. We hadn't eaten anything since about 1.30pm, and it was now nearly 9pm. We proceeded to get quite sauced.

Around 10 minutes before the show started a man with his girlfriend (?) were also shown to our table, at which point, upon seeing two people at the table already, he proceeded to have a huge hissy fit about having to sit with other people. He was getting really angry, and he eventually slipped the waiter a 50 to get him and his partner on their own little table essentially in the middle of the stairs. This meant that we ended up having the whole table to ourselves for the night.

The show was brilliant! Of course, we were quite drunk by this stage, but it really was a spectacular series of performances that included acrobats, jugglers, comedians and ponies. One of the highlights was when a giant aquarium came out from under the stage and was lifted above it, inside which were three huge boa constrictors and a woman who 'danced' with them underwater. Well worth the money and so much fun.

The show finished at around 11.30pm, at which point we were both very drunk but very happy, and in great need of food, so we popped right next door to Quick Burger and had what I consider to be the best cheeseburger every (although that could be drink Jess talking) and we eventually headed back to our hotel room around 1am. A brilliant day in Paris!