Paul Morris tries out a very useful little card. The next time you’re in Paris make sure that you have the Paris Museum Pass in your back pocket. It offers unlimited access to more than 60 museums and monuments in Paris and the surrounding area. You can visit your favourite museum as many times as you like, and without having to queue. There are three passes valid for two (€48), four (€62) or six (€74) consecutive days.
Fittingly for an art trip, I stayed in in the Grand Pigalle Hotel, which opens onto the villas of the avenue Frochot, the private estate where Toulouse-Lautrec once lived. It’s slogan is ‘Bed & Bevarage’, and it certainly lives up to that in the excellent wine bar on the ground floor.
It is also very well-placed for museums – I simply pointed myself in the direction of the Seine and wandered downhill. It was hot so I didn’t take on the mighty Louvre, but I visited some old favourites, such as the monumental Musée D’Orsay, mainly for its impressive Impressionists; Musée Picasso, not just for some of the best paintings ever produced but for the moving portraits of his family when he was younger; and then the Georges Pompidou Centre for its quirkiness and excellent exhibitions.
www.musee-orsay.fr/en
www.museepicassoparis.fr
www.centrepompidou.fr
For more information about Paris check out www.parisinfo.com or pop into the offices at 25, rue des Pyramides, Paris 1st, from where you can go for a wander in the Jardin des Tuileries and use that card to explore the Louvre.
PHOTO: © Pauline Magdeleinat
