Sunday, November 8, 2009

In which we walk from Cluny to the Musée des Arts et Métiers

I had great plans for my mother's visit. We were going to go to Disney, and a bunch of great museums, and parks, and show her how wonderful Paris is. And then everyone got sick. (She was here for 12.5 days. Of those 12.5 days, at least one person was ill enough to stay home for 9.5 of them, and the kids were in school for 2 of the remaining 3.) There were, however, two things that she really, really wanted to see (other than her lovely grandchildren of course): the tapestries of the lady and the unicorn at Cluny, and the jacquard looms and the musée des arts and métiers.

Friday morning we convinced Blaise to pick Cherry up from school, and my mom and I dropped her off and headed into the city. Our first stop was the Museum of the Middle Ages (Cluny). Although we had visited the museum on Sunday, my mom really wanted to buy a book about the tapestries, and hadn't gotten to because Cherry was in the process of melting down and Blaise looked like he was about to collapse. (Note: Sick enough to stay home does not, unfortunately, always mean having enough sense to stay home. Especially when there are free museums to visit and you've been housebound for a week already.) So we went to the bookstore and my mom picked up a book about the tapestries, as well as some keychains for the women in a knitting group that she leads. I decided that her purchase qualified us to use the restrooms, and we headed off.

The walk from Cluny to the musée des arts and métiers is just over 2 kilometers long. According to google maps, it requires no fewer than 17 steps, 14 of which are continues (the street changes names) and 2 of which involved turning left, walking 5 meters, and then turning back right. In retrospect, I probably could have skipped printing the directions. En route, we passed the following churches:
1) Saint Severin (click the British flag for English)
2) Notre Dame
3) Saint Jacques
4) Saint Nicholas des Champs
and a bunch of others that we couldn't find names for.

We arrived at the museum and went up to the top floor. Mostly we walked through until we got to the fabric room, where we stopped to examine all of the looms on display. There were a couple of full size looms, but most were painstakingly made working reproductions, which someone had taken the time to weave several inches of cloth on so that one could see what the looms' outputs would look like. My mom took photos of all of them, a task that was made somewhat easier by the fact that teh security guard was sleeping through our entire visit. (On the other hand, it's not like it would be all that easy to haul off a huge Jacquard loom without anyone noticing.) Mostly we hurried through the rest of the museum because we had somewhat limited time, though we stopped to look at the gears room.

Then it was back to the metro, and home, where we were greeted by an extremely enthusiastic Cherry.

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