Musee d'Orangerie

If you are like everyone else and love impressionism, especially Claude Monet, there's a great little museum in the Tuileries just a short walk from the Louvre. I had been to d'Orsay, Pompidou, and the Louvre, but somehow I had not heard of this museum and would have completely missed it if no one told me about it. Inside, there are quite a few paintings from the early 20th century, including some by Renior, Cezanne, Matisse, and even Picasso. But the real treats are the Nympheas (water lily) murals that are housed in two big ovular rooms. These paintings were made in Monet's garden and are absulutely sublime. You can get so close that the painting looks like random brush strokes of varying color and then back away to the center of the room and watch the paining come together. One could easily spend hours sitting on the bench in the middle of the room. The museum is very pleasant and manageable, expessially compared to the giant museums of Paris which have cast a shadow over it. I highly recommend this experience to any human being, and for anyone who likes Monet it would be a tragedy to miss out.