Musee des Beaux-Arts: The museum of water damage

We have been in Nimes France for 11 days. We do like some museums, but for an unexplored reason we had yet to visit one here. First stop was the Contemporary Art Museum. We had gone to its doors yesterday, but it was unexpectedly closed without explanation. Well today, closed again, but with explanation. They had a water problem and will reopen on Tuesday.

The good news was as I was using Google Translate to figure this out a very nice lady approached us. She spoke fluent English and not only gave us the lowdown on the museum but also informed us she had lived in Nimes for forty years. Her opinion is that what was once a beautiful city had become rundown and dirty. We were surprised because where we are staying is kept impeccably clean by garbage crews day and night, and with near nightly hosing of the streets with water. She conceded the city does a great job of keeping the old town area very clean, but that is only an estimated 120 square block area in a city of about 150, 000 residents. Her other complaint is that the periphery of the city transformed from small businesses to too many big b0x stores. That is also a trend we found in the Mexican cities we have visited. Rampant consumerism is definitely not just an American phenomenon.

Our first choice for a museum visit was closed so we headed to #2, the Musee des Beaux-Arts.  What I liked best there were sculptures. Pictured below is the entrance, including sculptures.

The interior art dated from the time of Christ, but most prevalent were paintings from the 1400’s to near present. It is not one of those overwhelming museums with enough artwork to wear me out. There are only two floors and those are not overly crowded with artwork. I admit to a bit of guilt for this, but my favorite painting among a collection of old-time masters was completed in 2019. See two long range and two closeup photos below.

A few more pictures of the interior and a few more “objet de arte” follow.

We are not the most adventurous travelers. We do not rush to all of the historical sites in a city, or frequent restaurants. We do eventually get around to seeing much of the highlights in places we visit, and what we enjoy most is hanging out and walking around. Last night we went to a glace/frozen yogurt shop. We sat at a table outside the shop from about 8 pm until sometime after nine. We were across the plaza from four separate restaurants that adjoin each other. We often wonder what makes one more attractive than another.

In a square crawling with people, the difference in the number of people from one to another was profound, from overflowing to almost nobody. They all looked similar. The menus appeared to be similar. Attendance was not similar and in the time that we observed nothing changed much, additionally, we had walked through that plaza before and noticed the same thing.

Another of our observations is that there are a lot of families out and about at almost any time of day/night until sometime after ten. This was especially true on a Friday night and again tonight. As noted in earlier blogs people here appear to like to take their time in cafes and restaurants while they allow their kids to run around and play with other kids. As in Mexico, a preponderance of ice cream vendors stay quite consistently busy. We sat in a different square this morning and allowed the sun peaking over the roof tops to warm us as we sipped a coffee and a hot chocolate. Again, we took our time, about 45 minutes.

It will be interesting for us to see what travels to upcoming countries and cultures do to our interests and inclinations. Tomorrow morning, we are going to hang out again, because I figured out how to order a proper sized U.S. cup of coffee. At home you can order an espresso or a cup. Here everyone has assumed a coffee order is an expresso. But, that can easily be addressed by ordering “cafe allonge”, literally a long coffee….. I think. Supposedly the only difference is more water. Find out tomorrow.