Thanksgiving Vacation 2012 - Paris Day Two

Our second day in Paris became a museum day. For one, it was going to rain and museums are a great place to be when the weather is stormy. Also, the Louvre is open late on Wednesdays, so we decided to make that our last stop. After our breakfast buffet ritual, we bundled up with warm clothes and this time umbrellas as it was already lightly raining outside. A short walk to the Metro station and we were ready for a quick trip to our first stop, the Cluny Museum. According to Wikipedia, the "Cluny houses a variety of important medieval artifacts, in particular its tapestry notable works stored there include early Medieval sculptures from the seventh and eighth centuries. There are also works of gold, ivory, antique furnishings, stained glass." It was a smaller museum, so we spent less than an hour here. Instead of buying a ticket for just this museum, we ended up buying a two-day Paris Museum Pass, which is good for entrance to over 60 museums in Paris. So we planned our day around museums that were on this pass to get our monies worth.

Just up the street was The Pantheon, not to be confused with the famous one in Rome. The inside was well decorated and had picture-worthy architecture with the usual tall columns, statues and paintings. In the center was a pendulum hanging down from a very high ceiling. It represented the rotation of the Earth, according to the green brochure I'm looking at. They were consistent  in having the English brochures in green in most of the museums. Down below was a very large crypt, where many famous French people are interred.

Once outside the Pantheon it was nice to see the rain stopped, for we were walking to our next destination, the Conciergerie. It was located on an island in the middle of the Seine near Notre Dame. The building was supposed to be big and hard to miss, but it took us a long time to find the entrance just to find out it was closed but would be open the next day. So off to lunch we went. There are so many places to eat, we tend to stop and look at the menu, and if it looks good and someone from the restaurant welcomes us in, that's were we eat. We were seated next to a window along a busy street and with a great view of Notre Dame and other buildings. I ordered the special, which included the appetizer of the day, a main dish and then the dessert of the day. For a drink I went with a coke, and man, cokes are expensive. A single small bottle can cost up to $10. Beer and wine are cheaper, but I knew a beer in the middle of the day would make me more tired. The food and service was once again good, and we left to head to our next stop which I believe was the Museum of Cinematography.


It was located further away from the city center, so it took a few Metro lines to get there, which put us in yet another district of Paris - Bercy. The museum is located in a building that houses many attractions, but our tickets got us access to two rooms. The first was a room dedicated to the history of cinematography in France. It contained old film projectors and cameras. There were projections of movies on the walls, and some of the exhibits were hands-on, which were probably for the children, as there was a large group of children there on a field trip. Upstairs was an exhibit dedicated to the famous French director Marcel Carné, who I probably had heard of, but I was not familiar with his works. They were projecting clips from his movies on the walls and there was other stuff to look at as well. As you might have guessed, I can't remember much from this museum, maybe because to photos were allowed (or I was tired), and I tend to rely on my pictures to piece together my trip and write this blog.

Now we were headed back to the Champs Elysees district to the Museum of Decorative Arts, located near the Louvre. It contains, according to Wikipedia,  "... furniture, interior design, altar pieces, religious paintings, tapestries, wallpaper, ceramics and glassware, plus toys from the to the present day." These displays are in various rooms on different levels, some of which were closed, such as the room of tapestries. However, we were lucky to find that there was a special exhibit of Star Wars collectibles that contained some very rare pieces such as prototypes for Princess Leia. I'm sure the collection was very valuable, and I would have loved to have owned some of the figures, even though I don't really collect Star Wars memorabilia. And unfortunately but understandably, no photos were allowed. People of all ages were looking over the exhibit that included all six movies. After this exhibit the rest of the museum was kind of boring so we walked quickly through most of the rooms. The French furniture room for some reason contained only a few pieces of furniture. A more interesting room was a few floors up. It was dedicated to music and pop culture. They had lots of album covers displayed and had music playing. The highlight of this room for me was a display that included an Atari ST, just like the one my Dad bought back in the 80's and I still have! What made that computer unique was that it had build in MIDI ports to be connected to other MIDI equipped hardware such as sequencers and synthesizers.  I thought I took a photo, but I can't find any so photos must not have been allowed.

So finally, our last museum of the day was the Louvre. The biggest and most famous in Paris. Since my sister was tired and had been there before, she headed back to the hotel for the night. So my brother, his wife and I entered the Louvre, at least the shopping area downstairs which in itself was massive. Once we found the entrance, there was no line and all we had to do is to show our museum pass. Now the Louvre is really big, taking up four stories that are divided up into themes. Really the only painting I had to see was the Mona Lisa, and since it is the most popular artwork there, all signs led you to that room. So we made a beeline to the room and there it was, sitting on a wall all by itself, protected by glass and a roped-off area. There were crowds of people jockeying to get up close for a photo of the painting a photo of them near the painting trying to make a Mona Lisa smile on their face. I opted just to get a photo of the painting, and the problem I had was in every photo you could see the reflections of other people in its class covering. So I took about seven photos hoping one would turn out.

So now we had to plan what to see next. Unless you want to spend a whole day here, you need to decide what to see, and more importantly, how to get there. It is not always easy to get from one room on a floor to another room on a different floor. The map may show that the rooms connect, but they don't always, sometimes due to closed areas of the museum. As we tried to get to the section that contained paintings from France, Germany, Belgian and other European countries we viewed what we passed along the way, including the Venus de Milo, which I almost walked passed without seeing. Whenever I think of this statue I think of the Simpson's episode where Homer stole and ate the Gummy de Milo.

We passed through a large section dedicated to Napolean III that had lots of rooms filled with fancy furniture and chandlers. Another room contained large Egyptian statues, much like the ones I saw in the British museum, which should probably be returned to Egypt some day, when they have a stable government. After making lots of wrong turns, walks up stairs and escalators, and hitting dead ends, we finally made it to the European paintings. We walked through the rooms and after a while we all agreed that it was time for dinner. I was told that there was great food in the Louvre, but when we went to the main food court, most of the places were close to closing and only had limited foods selections. Another restaurant was closed for a  private event. So we chose to leave, get on the Metro and get off on a stop and find a place to eat in the city. Well, we chose the wrong stop because we found no restaurants that looked good, and the one that did had no customers. So we got back on the Metro and got off near our hotel, and decided to eat at the first place we saw, which was a pizza place, and pizza sounded good. The restaurant was very busy and they seated us once again near a window. I ordered a whole pizza and ate all but the crust, and drank a beer or two.

So needless to say, we were all exhausted and ready for sleep. A short walk across the street to our hotel where we retired to our rooms for the night. Tomorrow was our last day in Paris, at least for me and my sister, so anything we wanted to see, that was going to be our last chance. Luckily I slept really well and was ready for breakfast the next morning.