Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Nick in Paris - Les Invalides


Went back to Les Invalides for a second visit. The museum is open on Tuesday nights till 9:00 pm, so I planned a quick visit after work. They only open part of the museum, but fortunately they openned the Horse and Musket wing when I visited. This time there were less people -- but there was some sort of event for highly important people in the chappell, as the museum was surrounded by police swat teams etc. But the best thing was that there were multilingual guides all through the museum. I'm not sure if they are there every Tuesday evening, or just because VIP's were cruising through. Anyway, I had a great chat with one guide who let me play with some replica swords and wear a replica shako! I also discovered that the reason there were less uniforms than I had hoped was that many are on loan to another museum. I also found Napoleon's coat from Marengo, and his horse (stuffed of course). To quote a French woman who saw Napoleons coat, 'Il est miniscule'. Not only was he short, he was skinny. No bigger than a typical 13 year old today!


I was finally kicked out when the museum closed!

1 comment:

mimi said...

Thats cool to know about napoleans coat and stuffed horse.

on my brief visit to paris I only did a bus tour
hop on hop off Paris bus tour

tho i shall make it a point to go see the artifacts you mention ;)