I love the small museums of Paris; the Orangerie, located in the Tuilleries, has two fantastic oval rooms with Monet’s Water Lily canvases surrounding you. Another favorite small Paris museum is the Marmottan, a former estate that now houses a treasure trove of impressionist paintings, including Monet’s painting that gave Impressionism its name: Impression Sunrise. On our last trip to Paris, …
Strasbourg is just a 3-hr train ride from Paris, but it seems worlds away. This Alsatian city is a beautiful blend of French and German. And, that may be because it has lived under both flags at different times in its existence. Strasbourg is blessed with eleven great museums. Here is a glimpse of what …
A few years ago, after visiting Picasso museums in Spain and Switzerland, my husband and I set out to find Picasso in Paris. Spanish born, Picasso came to Paris as a young man at the dawn of the twentieth century where he influenced the art world for more than fifty years. As a young man, …
I came by three extraordinary Istanbul museums because I was suffering from a case of culture overdose! For four days, I had ‘done’ all the obligatory Istanbul sights: I admired the tiles in the Blue Mosque, visited the soaring columns of the underground cistern, jostled with the crowds in the Grand Bazaar and the spice market, …
The city of Nürnberg is considered to be the cultural capital of Franconia, a distinct region in the German state of Bavaria. While many tourists visit the city to frequent the Christmas market or have their photograph taken in front of the Schöner Brunnen fountain while turning the golden ring for luck, some of …
One of the most interesting museums in Paris, a city filled with great museums, is the Musée National du Moyen-Age Thermes de Cluny in the Latin Quarter. The two important sites on the grounds are the 15th century mansion (the Cluny) with its collection of medieval art, and the 3rd-century Gallo-Roman baths (the Thermes). The Cluny’s …
The Opera Garnier There really is a lake beneath the old opera house in Paris, just as The Phantom of the Opera says. No phantoms are boating on it, however, as far as anyone knows. The “lake,” which is more like a water-filled hole, has a more mundane purpose; it’s a reservoir used by the …
One of my favorite places to spend an afternoon in Paris is at Le Musée Picasso, a gem of a museum in the historic Marais quartier. As one would guess, it is devoted completely to the collection of Picasso masterpieces. Over the years, the museum has amassed a very diverse and skillfully curated collection of several …
From the first time I saw a picture of the Centre Georges Pompidou in my 6th grade French class, I knew this was a place I absolutely had to visit someday. While my classmates did their cultural projects on the Eiffel Tower and the Arch de Triomph, I fixated on the tubular escalator on the …
To tell you the truth, I’ve never been much of a fine perfume person. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never turn away a bottle of Chanel No. 5 if it were given to me as a gift, but I rarely shop for perfume on my own. However, after an informational trip to Fragonard, the famous …