The French Dispatches - Part Trois

Don't forget about Part 2!

When last we blogged, we'd just finished lunch and pastries in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, and we were headed for our 2pm entrance time at the Musee de l'Armee!

The Emperor says "bonjour!"

During our last visit to Paris in 2018, we purchased the Paris Museum Pass, which included admission to several museums across the city, both heavy hitters like the Louvre and the D'Orsay as well as monuments and experiences, like climbing the towers at Notre Dame.  We initially planned on that trip to see both the Rodin and Army museums, but we plain ran out of time (and steam - that was a loooong day, and I severely overscheduled us).  Much like the Musee Rodin, the Musee de l'Armee was high on our list of priorities for this trip, and we set aside an entire afternoon to ensuring we thoroughly explored its many wonders.

Unlike the Musee Rodin, which, even though it's housed in an old hotel, doesn't have a super huge footprint, the Musee de l'Armee is MASSIVE.  Per Wikipedia, the current iteration of the museum was created in 1905, when the museums of artillery and army history merged; as warfare didn't exactly stop in 1905, the museum has continued expanding its collection of artifacts since then, adding on buildings and exhibit space as needed.  Part of the museum is located in the Hotel des Invalides, a space originally constructed in 1676 for disabled soldiers (hence the name "les Invalides"), and some still live in housing on the grounds today.  France has an extremely long history (by our standards, at least) of warfare and military skirmishes, and the museum reflects that; the exhibits truly include everything, ranging from medieval suits of armor to models of trench warfare used in World War II.  

It's a lot to see, and we didn't even come close; however, we did find all sorts of cool things.  First, the dome out front (which you saw in some of the pictures of the Rodin Museum) is incredible:

The golden dome crowns the Cathedral of Saint-Louis des Invalides, also built in 1676 as part of the original des Invalides space.  While it absolutely dominates the area (you can't not look at it), we didn't visit it until after the museum itself; we'll come back to it in a bit, I promise.

While we oriented ourselves (and used the facilities), we took a few moments to browse the gift shop and found all sorts of gems, including this:

Would you like to smell like Napoleon?  Chris declined.

(It actually smelled a little woodsy, like sandalwood - it wasn't too bad)

Okay, on to actual artifacts!  Since we don't have much of an opportunity to see suits of armor in our American museums, we made the medieval section our first stop.

This one has a moustache!

Look at how many gauntlets they have!

It was like this all over the museum - 

just tons of gauntlets, helmets, joint armor, etc, taking up display cases.

It was easy to tell the armor used by richer folks of the times -

look at the inlay work on this helmet.

As you might imagine, we also found lots of guns, swords, cannon, and other weapons (we took to calling them the "poky pokies" and "bangy bangies" - once you see around 800 of them, your mind starts to go).

This gun was around 8 feet long - you can see us standing at either end of it

In the courtyard

This was an exhibit of tiny models of weaponry, used for design purposes.

This little dude was about a foot long and just as high.

This guy obviously ran afoul of the bangy bangies.

In addition to the thousands of pieces of weaponry, artillery, and gear, there were some neat exhibits that were more artistic in nature, too, which I didn't expect.  One room held nothing but tiny tin/lead figurines dating back as far as the 1700-1800s, representing military units around the world.

This is just one wall of this room - there must have been tens of thousands of these tiny guys

Chris found these - he was like, "honey, the highlanders!"

And he was 100% right!

This room also contained a set of miniature dioramas of the life and times of Napoleon

(he's big around here).

Way up in the attic, there was also an incredible collection of scale models of fortified cities, some of them dating back to 1668.  

While the models were smaller than life-sized, some of them were still quite large

This was way in the back corner, but when we found it, I gasped aloud -

we've been there, and it looks JUST like it!

In case your French is rusty, this says the MSM model above was made in 1691,

added to the collection in 1704, and refurbished in 1772, 1947, etc.

This model is older than the founding of our country by about 80 years!

By this point in the day, we were pretty done wandering around gazing at instruments of war (beautiful though many of them might be), but before heading out, we had one more stop to make.  Well, two stops technically, if you count the gift shop, where we purchased a tea towel and Christmas tree ornament shaped like a tiny bicorn hat (no, curious reader, we did not buy the cologne).  With that settled, it was finally time to see the Emperor!  

Chris has visited the Musee de l'Armee before, on a family trip to France when he was much younger, and he mainly remembered it as a cool place with lots of guns and armor (he was not wrong).  My main point of interest in it, however, was more of a historical reason - the museum, particularly the gilded dome atop the Cathedral shown way above, is the final resting place of the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte, also known as Napoleon I.  To finish out our day at the museum, we headed into the Cathedral to look around and pay our respects.

In addition to Napoleon's tomb (and the tomb of other military figures), the inside of the Cathedral is incredible.  Here are a few shots of the ceiling of the main dome:

Like many religious buildings, the Cathedral still has altars as well, although I'm unsure if services are still held in this facility:

The tomb of a World War I general

Napoleon's tomb is located on the bottom floor of the Cathedral, and while we chose not to walk down another set of stairs to view it from ground level, we could see it perfectly fine from above:

I wasn't quite ready for how massive this thing was.

See the people on our level for scale?

It's actually a sarcophagus with six different layers inside, and it took 20 years to build.   

After bidding adieu to the Emperor, it was back into the city streets, then down below them to catch the Metro once again to the Hotel Le Six.  We spent some time resting and packing up (we'd be catching the train to Bordeaux tomorrow) before changing into nicer evening clothes and setting out for drinks and dinner.  Our first stop for adult libations was La Ciel on one of the top floors of the Montparnasse Tower, but the bar was full.  Although we were bummed that didn't work out, we still had a chance to ride the elevators to the 65th floor and take a brief peek at the incredible view ("la ciel" in French means "the sky").

At the foot of the Tour Montparnasse, looking toward the heavens

Undeterred, and with an hour to kill until our dinner reservation, we headed back into the main Montparnasse area and found Madame Pampa, an adorable spot with great drinks.  We enjoyed some of their delicious cocktails and friendly atmosphere while staying toasty warm inside their atrium.

My drink - a take on the French 75.

You can see Chris' fancy gin and tonic in the background.

Attempting to capture said atmosphere

Showing up at Les Fauves, our dinner destination, a few moments before our reservation time, we were quickly seated and perused the wine and food menus before ordering.  We took zero pictures, as we were way too busy shoving all of their delicious offerings into our faces - we started with fried sardines and a sweet potato hummus, then had duck and lamb mains, and a Paris-Brest for dessert, and everything was amazing.  The wine was also great - it's always a pleasant surprise to see wine menus at spots like this where incredible glasses of legit French wine are around 6 Euros each (that's around $6 American at the time of this writing, given the exchange rate)!

Incredibly full of food and drinks, we meandered our way home and fell fast asleep!  Tomorrow, we'd head to Bordeaux!

Au revoir!

Amy

PS - Step count for Friday, Febuary 3rd was 17,748 (about another 8.5 miles).

PPS - What's Zoe up to?  This:

Making more friends, this time with a husky!

She's always buddied up with huskies - they're high energy, chatty dogs, just like her.