Day 10 - Sainte Chapelle & Musee D'Orsay

I thought I'd already hit the "must see" catherdals between our trip to Italy a few years ago and the one's I'd seen in Paris already, so I wasn't too worried about seeing Le Sainte Chapelle...I'm glad Allison had it on her must see list! It is very small but so beautiful! The Chapel was built in 1238. It is two stories and orginally the upper level was only for the King and his court and there was a private entrance from the palace. The bottom was for the place staff. The bottom is very impressive, but the upper level is jaw dropping. The upper two thirds is all stained glass on the top level. Each square tells a story and each row represents a book of the Old Testiment. It is just amazing!! King Louis IX is paid 40,000 livre to have it built and purchased the Crown of Thrones 135,000 livre and kept them in the chapel. (Whoa!!)

Next we walked through the bird market on our was to the Musee' D'orsay. The kids loved the bird market and were really disappointed that we couldn't take a bird home. We thought about getting a bird for the Delattes, because that is the name of their house. "The bird house", we decided against it...

The walk to the D'orsay was so much fun. There were a lot of street merchants selling old books, postcards, old maps and replica maps, old menus and prints. Allison got cute vintage posters for her kitchen.

At the Musee D'orsay we cut right to the front of the line and in a special door for strollers. The immediately went to the 5th floor for lunch by the old train station clock. Lunch was asi asi. (so so) But where the lunch was lacking the art made up for it. Especially the masters of Renoir, Von Gosh, and Degas. I loved the sculped ballerina by Degas and the ballet class. I also really like the picture of the mother and child in the crib. The book stores in the museums are amazing too!!