Musée Rodin re-opened in November after an extensive renovation, and all the Metro stations are plastered with posters promoting the renovated attraction. We figured this would be a good final museum destination.
Located just across the street from the Invalides, the French Army museum, the Rodin Museum is housed in a large, handsome mansion and an extensive garden where his monumental sculptures are displayed. The building was used as a Sacred Heart girls’ school until 1904, when it was taken over by the French government as affordable housing for artists. (See, nothing’s new.)
Rodin had lived there in an apartment since 1908, and some of the other residents included Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse, Isadora Duncan and Ranier Maria Rilke. By 1911, Rodin was the only occupant of the building. In 1916, just before his death, Rodin donated his works, collections and copyrights to the French government to establish the museum in his name in his old home.
Today the museum houses hundreds of sculptures by Rodin as well as a roomful created by one of his mistresses Camille Claudell and several paintings by Van Gogh, Monet and various other artist friends of the sculptor.
Since today was the coldest we had been in Paris, with the temperature hovering around 40, we decided to forego the extra admission for the garden. We’ll walk through that in warmer weather one day.
On the way back, we popped into one of the nine Le Vieux Campeur shops to buy wool socks. The nine shops of Le Vieux Campeur are all within two blocks of each other, essentially a Bass Pro Shop split into categories in separate buildings. The sock store has an entire room of socks in various weights, fabrics, designs and prices.
Back at the apartment, we did a bit of research and found a little restaurant on a street right around the corner that we had never walked down. Our street, rue Laplace is one block, but it looks like a thoroughfare compared to rue de Lanneau, which is barely an alley.
Le Petit Prince was a find. It looks like a tiny cave, but opens up into a large back room. The kitchen is downstairs in the cellar, and all the dishes are literally run up on foot by the waiters. Our waiter happened to be from Denver; he is attending graduate school in French at the Sorbonne.
Dinner was excellent. I had an rich dish of pork cheeks, tender and tasty in a relatively sweet honey-based sauce. Lynn ordered the steak in blue cheese sauce. It was wonderful. I have to think that you could dredge fried baloney in a French blue cheese sauce and make a memorable meal. Our wine was a Chinon from the Loire Valley. It was 24 euro. In the U.S. at any restaurant, it would cost two or three times as much, if you could find it at all.