Today was arguably our most ambitious day – we went to TWO things in one day! (My 20-something self would laugh at this but, man, am I feeling my age on this trip!)

After a quick breakfast of toast and jam, we made our way once again to the Musee Histoire de Paris Carnavalet – this time with timed tickets in hand! Like the Hunting museum the other day, this one also used artifacts and artwork to tell its story (often at the exclusion of much other explanations) AND was housed in a series of 19th century mansions. The Carnavalet museum tells the history of the city of Paris from pre-history up until the ’70s or so.

I had allotted about 3 hours to our time here in order to make our next activity. The hours in museums seem to pass amazingly fast! I was very grateful to the child-friendly signage around the museum that gave pithy explanations of the themes in each room and highlighted objects of interest throughout. Focusing primarily on these, we were able to speed through at a healthy clip. Despite there being relatively little explanation beyond the objects presented, I feel like between our tours and museums, we are slowly starting to piece together a history of the city (a lot has happened here!).

After the Carnavalet, we took one of our longest walks in the city to date – this time out to the Melies Museum.

But first, we must eat! We stopped at a bakery and grocery store to load up on picnic supplies before taking them to Parc de Bercy. Unfortunately, the sun had set behind the buildings by this time so it was pretty chilly (we’d chosen to go without jackets today because it wasn’t raining and touring museums with coats in tow (plus masks) gets HOT!).

Just in time for our timed entry, we headed over to the small museum dedicated to the early French filmmaker George Melies. He was known for taking a fantastical approach to the new moving picture medium (a departure from the largely documentary-style that was common at the time by folks like Edison). He himself was a magician and used jumpcuts, superimposition and more to create fantastical stories for his audiences. His most famous film is A Trip to the Moon.

A few things I was surprised to learn: One, early moving pictures were seen as pretty lowbrow – most of their publicity came through touring with circus acts. Melies himself died in relative obscurity. This is why, I imagine, this museum didn’t have many Melies artifacts. Why keep items from something that is a passing craze? Another thing that surprised me was looking at the works that inspired A Trip to the Moon (including Jules Verne and H.G. Welles)- it’s a pretty blatant rip off!

We made it through this museum much quicker than I anticipated so we headed back to our AirBnb with plenty of evening left. Tomorrow we have a pretty light schedule with options to do more if we like, but either way, it’s a great way to close out 2021!