Today was a day of fine living - art galleries, a picnic and a restaurant meal.First stop was the Musee d'Orsay.  Again we bought tickets online and got there at opening time so there was no queue at all. This museum, really an art gallery, is in an old train station and the building is as much an attraction as the contents. We saw Claude Monet's lilies and lots of Monet paintings, which were much better than I ever expected. Edgar Degas' ballerina paintings and sculptures; Rodin sculptures; Manet; Vincent Van Gogh, including Starry Night which Jed was very excited about because he had made his own starry night painting at school.  Isabelle liked all the impressionists (Monet and Degas), Ruby like Starry Night and Monet's poppy fields. Lots of people told us this was their favourite museum, and we now know why.

For lunch we found a boulangerie in St Germain and bought filled baguettes and cakes . An elderly French lady made a point of telling me it was the best boulangerie in the area, pinched Jed's cheek and gave him a biscuit out of her bag!  We ate our picnic in a park on the Ille d'Cite (where Notre Dame is), beside the Seine.

In the afternoon we went to the Centre de Georges Pompidou, which is the modern art and contemporary gallery. This is a modern building that created controversy when it was built as it was built "inside out" - the ducting and plumbing pipes are all viable on the outside of the building, as are the lifts. It was a bit hard trying to do two galleries in one day but worth it. In the modern collection we saw Matisse, Miro, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Dali (Jed's favourite), Francis Bacon... The contemporary collection was also great but we'd pretty much run out of steam by then.
We then made our way back to Montmartre, filled our drink bottles up at a public water fountain, and found our way to Le Bon Bok restaurant. It has been open since the late 1800s and was frequented by Manet and Degas back in the day. We had escargots, confit de canard, Poulet aux Camembert, Saumon, salade de poire, salade de canard. Then walked back home to our place in Little Africa! By Steve