Thursday, August 19, 2010

Musée Rodin

During the summer of 2004, I took my nephews, James and Michael, on a 3-week backpacking trip around Western Europe. We started in Paris and ended in Amsterdam. In between, we stopped at Nice, Monaco, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Florence, Venice, Munich, Bingen, Cologne, Copenhagen, and Malmo traveling mostly by train. It was the summer break before their senior year in high school. It was also to be my last summer before I headed overseas to work. I had already planned out that I was going to go to Iraq sometime in the coming months. I wanted to do a long trip with some company, before I headed to Iraq. So I figured I would asked both of them to join me as an early high school graduation present to both.

Six years later, I haven't had a vacation that lasted that long. I have had many trips since then, but they are always 3, 4, or 5 day weekends. I have been able to do a few week long breaks, and several two week vacations when coupled with a stop in Seattle. I was planning a 3 week Europe trip with three nieces later this summer, but it is not looking too good. The main construction project I am overseeing for work has been delayed a bit. I can not really take off until its completion.

Anyway, one of the sights we saw during the backpacking trip with my nephews was Musée Rodin in Paris. The museum displays works by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The museum building is surrounded by gardens that display Rodin's sculptures in a natural setting.

The following are pictures from that visit of the museum:









I long to take an extended vacation, hopefully soon, and to be lounging around like what is shown on the picture of me below, at the Rodin Museum grounds.

2 comments:

  1. My first trip here was probably one of the most significant events in my life. We were lost in the Parisian subway undergrounds trying to get here. Everything started to look the same... the names, the stops, etc. It was getting late. It was the first time I actually felt a little scared during our '98 backpacking trip. My whole life I always thought of you as that flawless uncle who would never get us lost in Europe. =) But it humanized you for the first time. It was the type of vulnerability that I needed to witness, to help me find some type of confidence in my life. To this day, I'm still not sure whether you pretended that we were lost, but that memory continues to help me overcome each challenge that comes my way.

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  2. Ron,

    You beat me to it again. I have a draft for a Rodin Museum, part 2, post. Subjects were to be our attempt to find the museum, getting lost along the way, and finally getting there but the museum being already closed back in 1998; and the seven backpackers in 2002, with Mek's "shake" moves at the Rodin Museum garden and your education snippets about Rodin's secret life to the very gullible Mek.

    Yes, we were lost looking for the Museum and it was getting dark. But that was the fun of it. On a guided bus tour, that was one of the few chances we got away from the tour group.

    Uncle Elvin

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