When I booked my ticket for Paris, there was one thing I knew that I wanted to do for sure: spend a day in the Musée d’Orsay and have lunch at the cafe inside. The Musée d’Orsay is one of the greatest art museums in the world, carved out of a hollowed-out train station that now houses some of the most famous art in the world. I have wanted to visit it since I knew it existed. Walking through it takes an entire day, so I planned on doing just about nothing else, wanting to feel like I had all of the time in the world.

My aunt and I met up and we walked the entirety of the museum. My father is the type of person who walks up to a painting, stares at it for twenty minutes, then backs away from it, and stares at it for another twenty minutes, studying every brushstroke and paint fleck. My aunt is not such a person. She could walk into a gallery, do a 360 turn, and then walk off, satisfied that she had gotten everything she needed from the paintings.

Like most people, I’m somewhere in the middle. 

We made it through the museum in record time in comparison to how my father would have done it, but I still felt like I savored all of the artwork. I saw all of the paintings that I wanted to see, starting with the “Birth of Venus” by Cabanel, which my parents have a print of hanging in their house. Seeing it in person is an entirely different experience, one that also makes you want to lay naked in the middle of the ocean with knee length hair while a bunch of cherubs careen over you. 

We checked out the Van Goghs, the Picassos, crossing off everything on my list except for Monet’s waterlilies (which weren’t on display and which I’d already seen). It was nothing but stunning paintings as far as the eye could see. 

We stopped to have lunch in a cafe that was behind a clock face that overlooked the Seine, sipping wine and chatting about the art that we had seen so far. 

After the Musée d’Orsay, I got ready to see the opera with Claire, one of my favorite people to go to the opera with. We saw Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy, a French opera about…well, we weren’t quite sure what it was about. The show started and Claire and I promptly dozed off, taking high-priced naps at the Opéra Bastille. For me, it was jet-lag. For her, it was the rigors of being a full time law student. Either way, we were tired.

From what we did see of the performance, it was beautiful. There were loud, perfect voices ringing out towards the ceiling and actual children who could sing better than me. Nothing humbles me quite like going to the opera or ballet and seeing the talent of the stars on display, being made to look effortless.

After that, we called it a night.

Between the art museum and the opera I had the kind of day that most people expect to have when visiting Paris, one in which there is no shortage of art and culture. It was a blissful day of admiring some of the greatest artwork in the world, followed by the soothing tones of opera music.

Who can ask for a better day in Paris?

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out how I spent my previous day in Paris