Day 2 – Taking a little peek in the Marais.

We’ve been to Paris many times, but have never really spent much time in the 3rd arrondissement. Today, that changed as we visited the Carnavalet Museum. It is a museum dedicated to all things Paris.

It’s Sunday in Paris and it seems like everyone is out and about today. To facilitate people enjoying the outside, many streets are closed to vehicle traffic with the exception of taxis. We took a taxi from our hotel in the 6th arrondissement and our driver was great. Besides getting us there, he gave us some tips on places to visit and things to be aware of.

The museum is free and was fairly crowded: mostly tourists, but also many Parisiens. It is a collection of everything including paintings, signage, decor, money, memorabilia of important moments and even entire facades from buildings. There are about 85 different rooms with displays.

We started with one of the things we were really interested in – signage. There are signs from shops, bars, restaurants and even the facade from an apothecary.

The museum is set up so that you walk forward in time from the 17th century to modern times. It was interesting to see some of the items that they have. The fascinating part to me is that some of these items were saved by someone and not discarded.

Once we passed through the signage, we just spiraled our way through the years. The 1600’s and day to day life of the wealthy, the 1700’s leading up to the revolution, the 1800’s and the Napoleonic era and the beaux arts and then the 1900’s with the world wars and occupation of France.

Many of the displays were examples of the good life of the wealthy, but there were also many artifacts from everyday people just living their lives.

These are some of my favorite displays and paintings. The woman at the end looks like a happy person.

That is a young Napoleon in the center photo below. Below on the right is a painting of the storming of the infamous Bastille prison during the French Revolution. Immediately below that on the right is a working heating stove that is an exact replica of the Bastille prison.

The entire facade and original items from the reception area of the George Fouquet jewellry boutique. The famous Art Nouveau illustrator Alphonse Mucha designed the boutique for the 1900 World Exhibition held in Paris. It’s magnificent.

Two interesting paintings and the actual table that Gertrude Stein wrote many of her works on.

We enjoyed our little walk through history. The Carnavalet Museum is definitely worth a visit.

Our plan was to walk around a little bit and then we have a dinner reservation nearby the museum. We took a bit of a walk, but honestly, we were both not looking forward to having to kill 2 hours.

We did pass by the restaurant and neither of us were thrilled with the table spacing and crowds. We talked and then decided to cancel our reservation and find a place closer to our hotel.

We grabbed a taxi back to the hotel to relax for a while before dinner. Our replacement restaurant was one we enjoyed on a previous trip. It’s called Agata and is an Italian restaurant that is only a five minute walk from the hotel. In retrospect, it was a perfect choice.

We had a glass of prosecco to wet our whistles, then we split a chicken caesar salad and a pizza. Add in a bottle of Barbera d’Asti and you had two smiling faces. For dessert, we had a tiramisu for Sue and a Paris – Bronte for me. It was just what we wanted and was delicious.

A quick walk home made for a perfect evening. We both put our legs up and chilled with some music before bedtime.