After the paintball tournament ended, Chris and I went to Paris for the day. It was an awesome sunny day after a week of rain and clouds, so that worked out pretty well. Now let me explain that when Chris and I go to a city together, there is usually a rough plan of where we will go, but we always end up walking around and seeing a lot just while wandering through the city.
While wandering around looking for the Museum of the Middle Ages, we happened upon this random beautiful palace with lovely gardens and fountains.
I don’t know what it is called, but the gardens were beautiful and it was a nice way to start out the day in the city.
We then went to the Museum of the Middle Ages (another recommendation from Jessica Ward – thank you!!!) and it was probably my favorite museum I have been to in Paris. There was quite a collection of sculptures and tapestries, some of my favorite things!
These were all heads that used to be on the Notre Dame, but due to vandalism were broken off and ended up here in the museum. The museum itself is a very old house that used to be a home of the abbots of Cluny beginning in 1334 although it has been rebuilt and added onto over the years. There are some awesome old doors and some great architecture in the building itself. It also housed remnants of architecture and sculpture that were part of private collection and was made into a public museum in the 1800s.
This sculpture dates back to the 1300s, which is really impressive considering it is in such good condition with no missing pieces!
In the basement you can see where the building was built on top of remnants of Roman baths dating back to the third century. So cool to see. I love old buildings and ruins, so this part was actually one of my favorite spots in the whole museum.
There was a large collection of stained glass – also lovely. It was neat to see it up close and realize that the glass really isn’t smooth. They are all different thicknesses and not a uniform, level surface. From far away you would never know, it just looks like beautiful, smooth colors.
So I was incredibly disappointed because the most famous display is of six tapestries that are a series known as the Lady and the Unicorn and the room housing these tapestries in under construction so we missed seeing them by a couple months! Ah! If anyone is familiar with the movie The Last Unicorn, the opening credits use pictures that are similar in style to the famous tapestries, I was SO sad to miss the exhibit. Maybe I will have to come back some day. There was, however, this lovely tapestry showing St. Stephen after he was martyred, and there is a unicorn… interesting.
More beautiful architecture!
And look how ornate the ceiling is!
There are also many beautiful manuscripts on display (okay, I seriously loved this museum). This one is sheet music, how incredible and detailed the art on the page are!
And this book is an illustrated guide to hand to hand combat. Interesting.
We walked over to the Notre Dame because I really wanted to go on the roof and see the gargoyles, but holy cow! The line was SO LONG! I had forgotten that is why I didn’t see the roof the last time I was in Paris. But the doors are also beautiful. I love old doors.
The line to see the roof is in the background, but we found a crepe stand instead. SO yummy. I love ham and cheese crepes.
We wandered around the city some more looking for a few gardens and also good hot chocolate. Here is another beautiful building.
I don’t know what this church is called, we found it while wandering around, but it had some really nice stained glass.
And Chris thought this painting with the knife in the heart of the mother of Jesus (I assume that is who that is?) was interesting. I don’t know the story behind it or the significance of it, but we had never seen that before in a painting.
Joan of Arc – there are a lot of nice sculptures of her in the city, I liked the way the colors from the stained glass glowed around her in this church.
After getting turned around and wandering a different way than we meant to, we came close to the opera and decided to walk over and see it. I had seen an exhibit about it at the Musee de Orsay and was curious to see it in person. It is indeed very ornate. I wish we could have gone to an opera!
We found this statue of Thomas Jefferson. I thought that was really interesting. He was an ambassador in Paris for a long time, but it was still kind of unexpected to see his statue in France. There were some American girls looking at it, and one of them said, “I don’t know, maybe he really loved to visit here.” I guess not everyone knows he lived here for a while as an ambassador! I made Chris pose since he is a Jefferson fan. This is our last picture since we wanted to go to the Rodin museum but it was CLOSED on Mondays. SO SAD!!! I was really excited to go there. Maybe next time. But we did get some really nice hot chocolate and an éclair, as well as some really good Italian food in some random Paris alley, so that makes for a successful day!
