Day 17 - Hostel Shuffle

Well, I'm temporarily homeless until I check into my new hostel. I don't think the room is open until three, so I'm not in a real hurry. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about my next destination. Part of me keeps saying "Rome. Rome. Rome." If Paris is already this crowded, Rome would be a madhouse by the time I was originally planning to go. On the downside, I was kind of hoping to keep the "most likely to be robbed" destinations towards the end of the trip when losing my passport wouldn't screw up everything. I'll decide tomorrow.

In the meantime, let's talk d'Orsay. That's a pretty sweet museum. They were going to tear the building down, but public outcry forced them to find another use for it.

• The "original" plasters of some of Rodin's great works are there. Rodin never really took chisel to marble or poured bronze. In those days the sculptor worked in clay or plaster and then assistants took billions of measuements and used special tools to reproduce the work in the less forgiving final materials.
• There are lots of impressionist works. In fact there's a whole upstairs gallery I didn't even have time for. I may have to go back. It's got to be against the law to just walk by that many Van Gogh's, Whistler's Mother, etc.
• There was an Art Noveau display that was pretty cool. It was a noble idea, but didn't seem to have the necessary practical considerations to ever be adopted by normal humans. Some of it was almost Gigeresque. (In the style of H.R. Giger, creator of the monster in the original Alien movie.) [quickly surfs to discover the H.R. Giger museum in Giger's native Switzerland is a possible destination for later]

After d'Orsay closed, I headed back to the hostel. I decided to make a compromise and do something a little more french for dinner. I grabbed some funky french vegetable cake for the hostel microwave. It was pretty good, but not something I'd seek out later. The truth is, I don't know enough about french food to know where a vegetarian should begin (outside of the obvious baguette, cheese, and fruit).

Well, that's about it for today. I don't really know what I want to do today. I think every other day is the most for museums. Perhaps it's finally time to visit Notre-Dame (Our Lady).