Category: Paris

Paris: Water Lilies and Early Works of Henri Matisse 


This is the fourth story in a four-part series
about the 15th anniversary trip my
artist wife and I took to Paris.


Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French visual artist; a painter known for his use of colour. 

His was a name I would have recognized from my university Art History textbook had I ever cracked it open. Instead, I recognized his name as one of my artist wife’s top influencers.

Like a diligent husband of an artist, I did my research before we went to Paris. Quickly, I learned he has zero paintings in The Louvre. In fact, most of his famous paintings are in his own national museum, Musée Matisse, located 900 km away in Nice on the Mediterranean coast of France.

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Paris: The Eiffel Tower


This is the third story in a four-part series
about the 15th anniversary trip my
artist wife and I took to Paris.


I’ve been married to an artist for 15 years. In that time I’ve learned that inspiration will strike anywhere, anytime. 

Just because I’ve learned that lesson repeatedly doesn’t make it any less surprising when it happens. 

And it happened — boy did it happen — the first time we visited the Eiffel Tower. 

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Paris: My Wife’s Louvre Tour


This is the second story in a four-part series
about the 15th anniversary trip my
artist wife and I took to Paris.


The day had arrived. We were visiting the Louvre on this crisp, rainy day in Paris. 

However, we had the small issue of her forgetting her membership at home – on a completely separate continent – to iron out first. Fortunately, the Friends of the Louvre Society has an office near the entrance. They replace lost or forgotten membership cards for a small fee.

With a fresh duplicata membership we beelined toward the entrance.

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Paris: The Friends of the Louvre


This is the first story in a four-part series
about the 15th anniversary trip my
artist wife and I took to Paris.


There we stood; waiting in line at the Louvre. I had bought her an annual membership for our anniversary, in part, to avoid this. 

Five minutes earlier we had passed through the member’s entrance at the Louvre. I had flashed my subsidiary membership card, and we breezed through the metal detector.  

Once inside, however, we had to swing by la Société des Amis du Louvre (Friends of the Louvre Society).

The society’s reception office is tucked away across the giant main foyer from the main information desk. 

As soon as we rounded the corner to enter the office, there it was… the line. A line we had to wait in. There was no way to avoid it. 

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The Louvre Top 10 Tips & Observations

There I sat on my hotel bed in Paris. My artist wife lay beside luxuriating in the white hotel bathrobe as we unwound from our busy day in the City of Lights.

She was reading a story while I was tapping out another 500-word Saturday Morning Story on my new MacBook. It was her 15th anniversary gift to me. We had just used my gift to her — a membership to the Louvre.

As I tapped out the story, I decided that it could wait. Instead, today I provide you — free of charge — 10 of my immediate observations about the Louvre fresh from that same night, mere hours after I returned from the world’s most famous museum.

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