Just after Christmas, Team Maneval undertook its latest trip to Europe, this time to Belgium and France. Basically, it was a two-pronged attack: I had several “surgical strikes” of particular things related to my research on the French “French hood” (a headdress of the female nobility in the 16th century); and Jim had a more general goal of partaking of his beloved Belgian beer, especially those types not easily (or not at all) found in the US.
My research goals for this trip were to examine several “primary sources” to see if I could find more details that will help me in my current project of reconstructing the 16th-century headdress called, in England, the “French hood”. Obviously, it’s not called that in France, as they don’t call fried potatoes “French fries” either. We started our trip (as many wonderful trips begin) in Paris. Here, my first research task was to head for the Musée Carnavalet, which is the museum that explores the history of Paris. I was interested in getting a close look at a painting there, to examine headdresses. We decided to walk, because walking in Paris is such a lovely pastime. Even sights seen many times hit you with their incredible beauty. As we headed north and east from our hotel on the Left Bank, we approached the Île de la Cité (an island in the middle of the Seine River, at the heart of Paris). On this island sits the amazing Notre Dame cathedral, which is always breathtaking…
…as well as the recently cleaned (and eternally beautiful) Sainte-Chapelle.
I love looking at architecture in Paris because you never know what you are going to find. This building has some mythological help to hold up its balcony roof.
The Musée Carnavalet is housed in a 16th-century “hôtel” (house in town). When you walk in the front entrance, you are in a beautiful courtyard.
After standing in a slowly-moving line (because they were scanning all bags at the entrance), I started trying to find out where my desired painting was housed….and learned that it was not currently on display (despite the website indicating the “room number” it was in). Sigh! I caught Jim just as he was about to buy tickets. We decided instead to just head to the “boutique” (gift shop), where I hoped to find at least a post card of the painting. No such luck, but I did find a nice little book about the architecture of the Marais region of Paris. So we spent the afternoon taking a walking tour of the architecture in that area. We started with the Place des Vosges, with its lovely late-16th/early-17th-century architecture on four sides of a square and a lovely park in the middle.
The best find on this walk was the Hôtel de Sens. I had seen this beautiful late-15th-century building on one of my first trips to Paris, but had forgotten its name or location. It was so wonderful to find it again. It is really an excellent example of what a “house in town” would have looked like.
It was very exciting to learn that this building is being renovated and will be open to the public in the fall! And who knew that you could find 14th-century timbered houses in Paris!
At this point, we were losing most of the daylight, so we headed back across the Île de la Cité towards the hotel (and our dinner reservation).
We ended the day with a wonderful meal at a favorite restaurant, Boullion Racine. For an appetizer, I had an asparagus soup. For the meal, a lovely tuna steak in a ginger sauce, sitting on a little bed of seaweed, and accompanied by saffron rice. For dessert, strawberry sorbet. Jim had a braised chicken with a roasted red-pepper sauce and risotto. And for his dessert, one of his personal favorites: a cheese plate. Of course, there was a lovely bottle of wine to accompany it all.
Thus ended our first 2 days in Paris, one more day to go in Paris before heading up to Belgium for Jim’s part of the trip. To be continued….
la françoysse 
January 14, 2016 at 4:11 am
You certainly had a beautiful day to enjoy beautiful architecture – good Planning! Sorry about the painting!