Parisian Paradise - Part XII: Maraise Walk & Orangerie

After the Montmartre Walk, we took the metro to another part of town for another one of Rick Steeves' walks: the Maraise Walk. These walks were some of our favorite parts of Paris, since we actually walked through the streets and got to see a lot of Paris, rather than just metroing from famous landmark to famous landmark.

One of the great things about Paris was all of the courtyards, like the one where the LDS church was located. There were a few of these courtyards on this walk, including Hotel de Sully:

There was a nice piece of artwork there in which we all felt the need to frame ourselves:

We also saw the Place des Vosges, the first planned square in Paris. It was built by Henry IV in the early 1600s:

It includes a house where Victor Hugo once lived - though, of course, that was closed on the day we were there.

And, while we didn't get any pictures while we were there, the tour also included the Holocaust Memorial and Museum, or "Deportation Memorial" as it is often called. That was a very thought-provoking and humbling experience to walk through a timeline of what happened, particularly to French Jews, during the Holocaust. The final exhibit was a walkway that was filled from floor to ceiling on all of the walls with pictures of children were died and/or were never recovered as a result of the holocaust.

That evening, we parted ways with Whit and Brian, as Deidra and I wanted to maximize the use of our Museum Pass by going to the Orangerie Museum. This is one of the smaller art museums in Paris, which was a good thing, since we got there 45 minutes before closing.

The main draw of the Orangerie were the famous gigantic water lilies paintings by Claude Monet:

In fact, the room was built specifically for these paintings. Each painting was about 4 feet higher, and about 20 feet long.

There were also other rooms with a number of other artist, such as Matisse, Picasso and Renoir, but after being through so many museums, there wasn't anything else that caught our attention enough to photograph it.