Paris From an Artist Point of View

While we were in Europe, we spent two days in Paris. Both days we walked our legs off, trying to see absolutely everything we could see. The first day we went to the Notre Dame cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde, the Arc de Triumph, and Champs Elysées. On the second day we saw the Louvre Museum because it wasn't open the first day. Then we had time to explore. Before our trip we checked out guide books from the St. Louis Library. One of the books that proved to be the most interesting was an Impressionists book of Paris. It gave us guided walking trips to take and see exactly what the artists painted, and showed the paintings. It gave us a lot of history of the Impressionist movement and showed where some of the artist lived or had studios. It was really great. It was amazing how much the city had changed, but also stayed the same. All those great artists that you learn about and see the paintings in Museums, we were seeing the real thing. It took us to some remote parts of the city, we walked mostly and used the metro, which is their version of the subway system. It was one of the best parts of our trip.

Most of the pictures we saw were painted by Renoir or Monet. I am a big Monet fan. These first pictures are from a bridge in Paris. There are something like 30 bridges across the Seine River in Paris. The word for bridge in French is Pont. So, this is the Pont des Arts; a pedestrian bridge. All the bridges have names, and stories, some built in honor of something that happened in history, some have statues that were donated by other countries. The Pont des Arts is near the Louvre.