Paris in mist

I checked the forecast today and it says Paris will be cloudy for the two weeks remaining in our visit. So I might as well resign myself to moody, misty photos of the city — not really a problem, though it does make the Tour Eiffel look beheaded when the fog is thick. (I’ll have to take a photo of that sometime, to show you!)

Today we walked the Champs-Élysées, starting from the Jardin de Tuileries (near the Louvre). There’s a big Ferris wheel where the Tuileries meets the avenue.

Near here, the street was lined with outdoor booths, in preparation for Christmas; there was a lot of kitsch for sale, along with cheese and saucissons, crêpes (and churros), and hot spiced wine. The rest of the famous street looked more or less like any other major shopping avenue (I suspect it looks cooler at night), but at the opposite end from the Ferris wheel, there is the Arc de Triomphe.

In the afternoon we visited the Musée de l’Orangerie, home to a suite of rooms housing eight Monet “Water Lilies” murals. Monet is so over-reproduced — especially the water lilies — but these paintings were incredible, vibrant and rich with color and movement and light, and beautifully showcased in the simple, harmonious galleries Monet helped design. Check out the virtual tour at the museum’s website.

When we left the museum, the clock faces were glowing across the Seine at the Musée d’Orsay:

And in keeping with the darkish, hazy ambience of these photos… before Wednesday night’s show at the Palais de Tokyo, I sat in the Palais’s vintage Fotoautomat and captured my new haircut: