museum pass madness

We had a lazy few days, and decided it was time to kick it into high-gear, so on Tuesday we bought two-day Paris Museum Passes. The PMP gives you free access to 60 sights and museums in the Paris area, so you feel obligated to cram a lot of sightseeing in, which was exactly the kind of pressure we needed to de-slothify ourselves. Here's what we checked out in the last 48 hours:

• The Pantheon, where France buries the men who have contributed most to the nation, including Voltaire, Rousseau, the Curies, Alexander Dumas, and Victor Hugo. We went on Jason's advice, and he was right, it was cool. It's sort of similar to the Lincoln Memorial, in that they're both temples to civic virtue, and they both make my spine tingle. I mean, Voltaire! Neat!
  
  Louis XVI meant the building to be a church dedicated to St. Genevive, but during the revolution the state took it over and rededicated it to its present purpose. In a way that makes it even more inspiring, because it symbolizes the triumph of reason and humanism. It's also a bit creepy, though, because you can't help but be reminded of how the revolutionaries also went smashy-smashy on Notre Dame. Now that I've seen Notre Dame, that seems inconceivably crass. Bad form, France.
  
  
• The Musee d'Orsay: Impressionism, and lots of it.
  
  
• The Rodin Museum: I really wanted to see his fallen caryatid after all the caryatids I saw bravely soldiering on in Greece, but it's in an area that's closed off for renovation. Boo.
  
  
• The Musee de l'Armee and Napoleon's Tomb: As if the rest of Paris doesn't provide evidence enough that Napoleon thought he was awesome. Bonus points, though, for the display of cannons captured from foreign armies. The French really know how to say "Suck on it!" with style.
  
  
• Notre Dame: As I've noted before on this trip, the classics of tourism are classics for a reason. Wow.
  
  
• Sainte Chapelle: Again, zow. Victor Hugo said, "In the Middle Ages, human genius had no important thought which it did not write down in stone." I'm pretty sure he was thinking about the cathedrals of Paris when he said that.
  
  
• Musee de l'Orangerie: I really liked the upper rooms in this museum, built to house Monet's huge circular water lilly canvases. I kind of thought those water lilly paintings were for cat people and 14-year-old girls who dot their letters with hearts, but I was wrong. After listening the museum's audio commentary, I could see how they helped pave the path to abstract art. Plus, they're, like, totally pretty.
  
  
• The Arc de Triopmhe: This was actually not the first arch Napoleon built to comemorate his awesomeness. He started with the one in front of the Louvre, but didn't think it was impressive enough. He really got the awe-inspiring thing right with the Arc de Triomphe, though. It makes every other triumphal arch I've ever seen look kind of lame.