I was stuck in front of this masterpiece. My elder brother was next to me, looking carefully at another painting, a Renoir. He was behaving as if he understood every single detail. In his eyes, I could see people dancing at the ball, drinking and eating, enjoying the pleasant moment. Everything seemed to be very clear to him whereas it was very confusing to me. At that time I did not understand why people liked going to the museum. For a long time, I have thought that people went to museums or listened to classical music only because they wanted to appear educated. I was six years old at the time and I was stuck in front of this chef d’oeuvre not because I was passionate about art but because I did not fully understand it.

It was my family’s custom to visit a museum on Sundays. Each visit I discovered a different place. Every time I looked carefully at all the details to write a new page of my story. It was not only a moment to discover different places but also an instant that my family and I shared together. 

All these moments had one thing in common: every time, after being an hour in a museum, my brother and I began pulling each other’s hair because staying for a long time in the museum was annoying to us – we were quite young at the time and an hour seemed like ages. The more we bothered each other, the funnier it was. We always ended by sitting on a bench or somewhere in the museum and were talking about ourselves. Each time, it was a kind of a retrospective moment when we were making our most important decisions.  Indeed, it was a moment when two brothers were listening to each other, enjoying the pleasant time, laughing together.  

Going to the museum proved to be quite an experience since I learnt about both my cultural background and it enabled me to create a strong relationship with my brother. Furthermore, while I was learning the stories of “The Raft of the Medusa”, the Second World War, or the ancient Greek civilization, and even more, I was also discovering my native city. I could never have imagined that there were so many wonderful places. The museum I like best in Paris is the Orsay museum because when I go there, I can stay for hours watching the main hall. I have never seen so beautiful a ceiling. There is no word that can perfectly describe the beauty of this place. The multiple giant glass windows in the ceiling highlight the curvature of the wall which looks like the curvature of a train. Indeed, this former railway station was refurbished into a museum. Besides, the huge clock that is hung in the middle is really impressive. I think that if this place were still a railway station, I would go there every day to see the seesaw motion: indeed, watching people walking to catch their trains, drinking a cup of coffee or even waiting for departure is always something fascinating. But now this place puts every single masterpiece in the museum into light. Another of my favorite places is definitely the Luxembourg garden, which was opposite my former high school. Each time I think of it, it reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, “Terrace in the Luxembourg garden” which describes perfectly well this spot. I have always loved wandering in this garden since I can find so many different things from small sculptures by famous artists to the mysterious gazebo where some orchestras sometimes play classical music, not to mention the large pool in the middle where children can have their boats sail and the magnificent Senate building. This garden is full of resources; that’s why, I think that it is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. In all the different seasons, it looks like a different painting and, in my opinion, the best one is definitely in autumn where the leaves turn red and the sunlight is not so strong as in summer and not so poor as in winter. The autumn is often associated with melancholy but from my point of view, it brings sensuousness to this beautiful landscape. 

Entering each one of these places was like reaching the rabbit’s hole in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.