The Museum Finish Line!

I left you with this image at the end of my last post, when we moved on from playing with statues at Musee Rodin, to the former Hospital, Les Invalides.

That shiny gold dome is it. They don't make hospitals like this anymore!

Its entrance doors are pretty darn impressive too.

It's dedicated to the tombs of some very influential people, the most honoured being Napoleon.

We had actually thought that the Hospital les Invalides housed the war museum. It turns out that it did, just in a different wing. We had roughly 20 minutes left until closing time, so we dashed out and made our way straight for what we hoped was the right entrance. We found it. Just!

Tom wants to cultivate a gun collection like this so one day when we have a teenage daughter he can scare the living daylights out of her potential suitors. I think he just wants an excuse to collect guns.

They had a really interesting map thing that showed what happened to the various troups in WWII when they were defending (so to speak) France from German occupation.

Tom also wants one of those swords. I may have to watch out for scary weapons making their way into our house decor!

Doesn't this photo just make you shudder?

The French seem to be very keen on making sure you're in no doubt as to which direction you're supposed to take next.

Although it was closing time for the war museum, there was still one more museum that we thought we could cram in that day. We decided to wander over towards the Ecole Militaire to see if we could catch our hop-on-hop-off bus on one of its last runs for the day, for a bit of already-paid-for transportation across town. Got to save those feet!

We spotted these beauties closing up shop for the day while we waited...

One of the best parts of this plan? The Ecole Militaire (as you may remember from this post) has a direct view straight down to the Eiffel Tower.

Resting tired feet at the foot of the Eiffel Tower... aaah.

The bus arrived, and we were on our way again!

Crossing the river...

Passing the Île de la Cité, the little island that splits the river Seine into two...

Our immediate destination? To check out those little secondhand book and poster sellers along the river that we'd passed earlier. I found some lovely little original Babar the elephant posters...

And some cute little postcard strips showing the gradual construction of the Eiffel Tower...

It was then time to get serious again, and power on to our next (and final) destination for the day - the Musée National d'Art Moderne, a few large Parisian blocks North of Notre Dame. We hopped off the bus at Notre Dame, the closest point we could get along its route.

Tom found one of the most interesting water fountains we'd seen on the trip..

We passed the absolutely gorgeous Hotel de Ville... can't even imagine what it costs to stay there for a night.

We were more than a little bit shocked when we reached this. We'd been expecting a slightly more traditional building, let's say.

Regardless of looks though, the top floor offered a spectacular view of the city.

When we entered the actual permanent exhibition floor, we were immediately struck by this view.

I thought it was pretty spectacular. It's made of bottle caps, and wine bottle cork strips.

So began our first officially modern art experience of the holiday.

Isn't this wire fence lace absolutely fantastic???!!

We're pretty mystified by some of the art pieces.

We made it out of the museum on closing time, took one parting glance at the view of the city, and finally, FINALLY we were done with our Parisian musem trek! Nine (ten if you count the fact that the architecture museum includes a monument museum as well) museums in two days! Whew!

We celebrated our achievement with a three course dinner at a nearby bistro (see here for details), and then made our way wearily back to our hotel, comfortable in the knowledge that we could not possibly have seen more of Paris in our available time!