On my way to the Louvre that morning, while passing the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, I had noticed that there was a McDonalds directly across the street. Although I normally eat the cuisine of the country I am in, I wanted to get a short, quick lunch in between museums. I headed there once I left the Louvre from the same entrance I had entered it.
This McDonalds was different from those I have experienced back in the US and in Canada. But it was very similar to a couple I have visited in other countries. On four sides of a forest of floor-to-ceiling poles were touch screens where orders could be entered. Once the order was complete, the user would just touch their debit card to the screen and then get a receipt. Without a debit card from a French bank, however, I received a ticket to take over to a window to then pay with a credit card.
The entire time I was in Paris, all of the cafes and restaurants showed the customer an electronic device which the customer then touched with their debit card to pay the bill. Again, because none of my friends or I had debit cards from French banks, they ended up printing out the bill from the device and presenting it to the paying party. They then either took the credit card (or cash) with them to the cashier, or we would be directed to go and pay the cashier. At the hotel, of course, we could just charge the meal to the room.
Many restaurants here at home will have you touch a credit or debit card to a handheld device to pay, so I was fascinated by the fact that it only seemed to work specifically for debit cards in Paris. Americans often tend to expect that things will operate the same way in other countries as they do in the US. That is rarely the case. We need to be able to adapt.
For everything where I had booked advance tickets, I had the ticket on my phone. But I also printed out all my tickets before I left home (and had the printouts with me) just in case my phone didn’t want to cooperate. There is never a problem at home, but I just didn’t want to take the chance of not being able to get in because my phone balked.
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs was created in the 19th century to be a source of inspiration for artists and craftspeople. They own millions of items such as furniture, tableware, objets d’art, clothing design, jewelry, glass, ceramics, toys, and more. Not all items are on display at all times, especially not the more fragile, such as clothing, photographs, and drawings. They also have entire rooms from different periods that have been moved to the museum and set up there.
The museum occupies portions of three floors in the Rohan Wing, six floors in the Lefuel Wing, and seven floors in the Marsan Pavilion of the Louvre Palace. The permanent collections cover eight centuries of the history of French style, innovation and creativity.
I decided to start in the Middle Ages (13th century) and see how far I could get before needing to go lie down somewhere. Fortunately I was quite close to my hotel, so wouldn’t need to walk far once I was done. I managed to cover the entire third floor of both the Lefuel Wing and the Marsan Pavilion. This contained items from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, 17th and early 18th centuries.
While much of the Louvre had been overcrowded, I was pretty much alone in most of the rooms I was exploring in this museum. I hadn’t been alone when I came in, so I surmised that we were just interested in different parts of the collection. I was able to take my time and even had empty benches on which I could park myself for a while here and there to contemplate what I was seeing and also to decide what I wanted to photograph. There was even a room with great views of the opposite side of the palace from which I took some photos. After the faster pace at the Louvre, this was pretty relaxing.
Beginning with altar pieces and items from the Gothic period, there was also a great 15th century bedroom. Next came some friezes from the castle of Vélez Blanco. There was the Early Renaissance and Late Renaissance in the next few rooms.
The 17th century and early 18th century had some beautiful pieces of furniture, paintings, and ceramics. There was also a ceiling from the Hôtel de Verrue and the entire study from the Hôtel de Rochegude. In France, a hotel can be either a lodging or a mansion or a city hall. These hotels were mansions.
I was standing on the third floor of the Main Gallery, looking up at the fourth floor (which was even larger and covered the rest of the 18th century plus the 19th and Art Nouveau) when I realized that I wasn’t certain I could even get up the stairs, much less tour the entire floor. Save that for a future visit.
So I departed through the gift shop and headed west along the Rue de Rivoli to a café that was just a block before the street to my hotel. The hotel had given the staff the night off for the Easter Weekend, so I couldn’t eat there. That was okay. I think that if I had gone to my room at all, I might not have left it again until the next morning. As it was, I was too pooped to remember to take a photo of my dinner and can’t, for the life of me, remember what I had.
Once I did get to my room, I finished off the remaining glassful of one of the small bottles of wine, leaving the final glass of the final bottle for the following night. Then I slept like a baby and didn’t need to get up until 8am the next morning.
Next time –The French Equivalent to the Tower of London — the Conciergerie
