The next day is quickly told, though we had some long conversations that I'll take up again later, after finishing the travelogue. We started by visiting the Musée de Cluny-Musée National du Moyen Âge, which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel. Marie spent close to an hour in the room with The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. A group of young students was visiting the exhibit at the same time, so partly Marie was listening to the teacher explain the tapestries: how they were made, and what they symbolized. Marie told me later that part of the time she was in tears, though she tried to hide it from me. She never said quite what it was that made her cry, but I believe part of it was that all her life she had read about these places and studied these artifacts—and now she was actually here, and the artifacts were actually there right in front of her.
From there, we picked up some sandwiches on the go for lunch, and then visited the Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité. From there we visited the Conciergerie, where the exhibit was almost entirely about the French Revolution. Although the cathedral of Notre Dame was closed (as noted in yesterday's post), we were able to visit the crypt underneath, to see the results of archeological digging in the area.
Over dinner I carelessly allowed the conversation to drift into discussing politics. I'll summarize some of that in a separate post.
No comments:
Post a Comment