Paris Trip #2 - Day 2 - Thursday - Last Official Museum Sprint, Tasty Thai & Canal St-Martin

Since I only had 2 days on my own this time, I decided to make Thursday Museum Day and Friday Shopping Day. There were a couple of museums that I didn't get to fit in last time, and I decided to start the day with Le Petit Palais (free admission) and then head over to Musée du Quai Branly. I was a little disoriented when I got out of the Champs-Elysees-Clemenceau metro - I really was not sure which way in the big circle of intersections to take - coincidentally, there was a tourist office booth set up across the street & I was able to enquire there & get my bearings.

The facade of the building is beautiful & the lobby and high painted ceilings in the hallway near the entrance were very impressive. This musuem had been described online as a mini 'scaled-down' Louvre - which I guess is accurate - but really scaled down! There were some nice objets d'art, including this work that I just loved, called La Femme au singe (1908) :

There were some marble sculptures, paintings of course (only 1 Monet), and Renaissance furniture. Nice stuff in general, but nothing super spectacular. I guess that nothing can really compare once you see the Louvre (which I saw 1st on my 1st trip!). The railings on the staircases in the buidling were of wrought-iron with elaborate designs of vines & flowers. On the lower floor, there was a piece called a ''meuble-rotonde à dôme'', created by Léon Alessandri, who patented a machine to flaten ivory and got a medal for this invention. He employed major specialists to complete this work - including Carrier-Belleuse to design the 4 relief sculptures in ivory (l'Architecture, la Sculpture, le Commerce, le Travail).

I was anxious to get out and see the circular courtyard/gardens in back of the building. Since it was in between seasons and a grey, cool day, it wasn't as bright as I had hoped it would look. A lot of my pictures didn't turn out so well, I tried out manually setting the aperature but ended up acheiving mostly slightly overexposed shots. Here's my best one :

I got asked to get down off of the little step leading up to an empty pool by security during my photo taking session, which was a little unnerving! There were a few people sitting on a terrace enjoying cafés.

I had my packed lunch on a bench in front of the palais and admired the vast gardens. I took quite a few flower closeups & was very happy with how some of them turned out (I'm getting almost as good as Shawn at this!)

I set off to the Musée Quai Branly - I already had an idea of where it was, as I had been in the quais area before & I knew that Quai Branly was right across from Quai d'Orsay. The outside of the grounds was really interesting to look at - many glass panels with writing on them and past that, gorgeous gardens and lots to look at (including a closeup view of the nearby Eiffel Tower). This museum is known for it's African, Asian and Native American art. It was a little difficult to figure out where to line up, quite a few other people were as unsure as I was - it turned out you could only line up to get in once you'd purchased a ticket at one of the wickets, but most were lining up in the ticketholders line without tickets. A woman security guard finally realized the confusion going on & closed off the lines properly so that we were all where we were supposed to be.

Walking into the exhibits, you must walk up these white ramps which have colored lights projecting words & images onto the floors & walls. When I walked in, I was told that picture taking was forbidden inside. I was quite surprised - this was the 1st museum that I was told this! After quite a long walk, you end up in a dim exhibit hall with wood carved totem pole-type structures as well as tools and weapons. Everything else was behind glass. There were head dresses, costumes, tools, weapons, masks, art....it seemed to go on forever. After only a few minutes, I was almost regretting coming here & felt like my 8 EUR I just spent on my admission may be wasted. I felt like this was all stuff I had seen previously, in some form or another. There were some interesting exhibits like booths were you could listen to natives speaking in tongues and little movie screens showing different aspects of different tribes & cultures, but all in all, with the dim lighting and the not so exiting exhibits, I was getting bored and sleepy. And with the remnants of jet lag hanging on in the late afternoon, I kept having to sit down on the built in benches along the walls to rest. I noticed I wasn't the only one doing this. I was decidedly officially tired of museums!

I decided to locate the café and get something to revive me a little. It was a sitdown restaurant & I chose to sit inside and ordered a café crème. The waiter suggested many desserts to me which were all pretty pricey so I ordered the least expensive item : a 'cake' au bananes. It arrived on a pool of raspberry coulis and a little dollop of whipped cream. Both the cake & the coffee were fresh & delicious. I took my time and read a lot more of my Harry Potter book.

I headed out to look for a phone to call Shawn at work, as we had not established where we were meeting that night or what we were doing. I had been a little bit worried about using payphones in Paris, as I had not been successful in making a call when I arrived at the airport on my 1st trip - the phone wouldn't take my credit card & I couldn't get change anywhere - and the change bureau had told me that the phones don't take change. After trying my Visa card in several phones that afternoon, I figured out that the pay phones only take prepaid phone cards. After asking different newspaper stands and then the woman at the metro counter, I found out that you can only buy these cards at tabagies and post offices. Now, to find a tabagie aound there....cheapest card you could buy was 7 EUR (I think), so I had no choice but to buy it (I still have it in my purse, with money left on it, if I ever go back!).... it was a relief to finally get Shawn on the phone after all of that running around! He said he'd like to go the 10th arrondissement as there are a lot of restaurants to choose from and it is near the Canal St-Martin.

After meeting, we pretty much stopped at the 1st restaurant we came across, a small Thai place with the food choices displayed in window cases at the front of the restaurant, similar to a deli counter. The menu looked really good and the food looked really fresh. The woman behind the counter talked to us about what she had on hand, and we decided on a basil chicken (for Shawny) and a lemon grass chicken (for me), both with Thai rice that had tiny bits of sauteed veggies in it. Shawn chose a Thai beer to drink and I chose a small carafon of rosé wine. Everything was delicious, and once again, we had the restaurant to ourself - no other diners were there and only a couple of regulars who ordered take-out were served as we ate. We found out that the woman, who was the owner, had just returned from spending the summer in Thailand and was just reopening shop that week. The bill was pleasantly low in the end as well!

We walked around the Canal and Shawn took some absolutely beautiful shots of it and the surrounding areas (the ones of us didn't turn out, unfortunately!). Here are some of the best ones :