After breakfast, Sapphire and Ezio and Cherry went off to play in the bedroom, and Blaise and I tried to plan out our day. If we were to do something, what would it be? A park was probably out, and Blaise was definitely not interested in the Cité des Sciences. We talked briefly about visiting the Louvre, but we're still waffling about whether or not to get annual memberships for the grown ups (kids are free), and so we didn't want to pay admission and then decide to buy the memberships. Besides, we'd really like to pick up some books for the kids to help them get more out of the museum, and we haven't had a chance to do that. (Read: haven't bothered to do that yet.)
Perhaps, Blaise suggested, I would like to go to the Cité de la Musique? Well, I would, especially now that I'd looked at his museum guide from his visit there with his brother back in December. They had gone to see the special exhibition on Miles Davis, and so he had only peripherally seen the rest of the museum. It was 8€ for each of us. Were the kids free? Some investigation: they were, and they would still get the audio guide. (There are a number of museums that include an audio guide with the admission fee. Generally speaking, you only get one if you pay a fee though, and so while children [and teens] may be free, they also don't get a guide. We generally end up passing on them because nobody else wants to listen to the kids argue about who gets to use the guide in a particular room, and if everyone listens in each room then it takes forever.)
We got to the museum around 11, and bought our tickets. At the entrance to the exhibits we turned over our tickets and were given audio guides with headsets for the grown ups and big kids, and an extra headset to plug into mine (or Blaise's) for Cherry (who of course was butt hurt that she didn't get her own). Some of the things we saw:
1) Lutes. Lots of lutes. For some reason I had always envisioned lutes as looking like unusually pretty ukuleles. Instead, they are monster instruments with a couple of dozen strings and two separate necks. I fail to see how any person possessing fewer than 4 arms could even begin to play one.
2) Hurdy gurdies, which also looked nothing like I had anticipated, but rather like a combination of a violin (strings), piano (keys), and antique car (crank) all in a package the size of a small microwave. I suspect that you turn the crank while depressing the keys to make the music. At any rate, I can see how one would play one with only the standard set of 2 arms.
3) The octobass, one of only 2 in existence. To play it, one had to stand on a stool and use one's hand to press down on levers, which in turn caused massive metal fingers to stop the strings. You could also use pedals which you depressed with your feet for this purpose. You bowed with the other hand.
I should note that we also saw many instruments (and listened to them on our audio guides) that were more familiar (or at any rate less bizarre). There were a plethora of harpsichords, viols of various sizes, cornets, harps, recorders, etc. There were also lots of violins, including some by Stradivari and Guarneri (and probably other famous makers as well. Cherry had kind of lost it by the time we reached the 19th century). There was also a substantial collection of instruments of the world, but by the time we reached it the two younger kids had reached such a high state of "through with this museum" that all I got from it was a fleeting impression of red and gold.
Afterwards, we let the kids run around in the grass for a while until we (the grown ups) got cold, and then loaded everyone up and headed for home.
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