In which we see Medieval Stuff

When we visited Paris two years ago, one of the museums that we visited was the National Museum of the Middle Ages (also known as Cluny, which is what I'm going to call it). This museum has, among other things, a tapestry series called The Lady and the Unicorn, which is one of the most famous tapestries in the world. When my mother realized that we had seen it, she was extremely jealous, so of course we needed to go to see it while she was visiting.

Yesterday morning, we made plans to go to the Cluny, as well as the Museum of Decorative Arts, since our experience in the past was that the Cluny was not an all day affair. The former museum was part of the free first Sunday program, the latter was not, so we had to decide what the best order for visiting was. Eventually we decided that we would go to Decorative Arts first, with the idea that Cherry and I could split afterwards if necessary, and Mom, Blaise, Sapphire, and Ezio could continue to Cluny.

The Museum of Decorative Arts was somewhat underwhelming. They had a really cool glass elevator, which Cherry and I rode down to the bathrooms, and an interesting exhibit of Depression era evening gowns. Evidently French women during the Depression were all very tall and flat chested. I got to show Cherry a Fisher Price record player and a couple of other toys that I had once had. We also got a very nice photo of her throwing a silent tantrum on the floor of the museum.

Afterwards, we headed over to the Carrousel of the Louvre for lunch. We had acceptable Japanesish stuff, but at least we were all full afterwards.

After lunch, we headed out (in the rain) to walk to Cluny. I'm still not exactly sure why we chose to walk, since it was a decent way (just over a mile), and there were convenient train stops for both museums. By the time we got there, we were soaking wet, and then we had to wait for half an hour to get into the museum, during which time Cherry announced (loudly) every 30 seconds that she needed to pee. We finally made it inside, and headed straight down to the bathrooms. Cherry wanted to use her own potty, but was willing to have me guard the door instead of locking it, fortunately.

We saw a very cool exhibit celebrating 50 years of Asterix down in the recently restored Roman frigidarium. We went upstairs and saw the lady and the unicorn tapestries. We saw a 7th century Visigoth crown. (Actually, we saw three of those.) We saw a surprising number of depictions of Mary nursing baby Jesus. Then we headed home on the RER.