Musée de Cluny and Eurostar to London

We knew from the weather forecast that today was going to be rainy, so we decided to go to the Musée de Cluny, the national medieval museum, which we have never visited before. First we had breakfast in a wee café along from our hotel. It felt so Parisian as we munched our croissants and drank our café crèmes. James expertly navigated us to the Musée de Cluny which wasn’t too busy (yet) and we went to see the “Les Arts en France sous Charles VII (1422-1461)” Exhibition. It was absolute fascinating; the Art Renaissance was beginning in the Netherlands and in Italy but France was embroiled in war with England, so the arts didn’t have the same chance to flourish. However there were some interesting developments as artists brought ideas back from Europe, and some great paintings, sculptures, stained glass and of course illuminated manuscripts were on display. We went through the rest of the museum but lingered most at the six “Lady and the Unicorn” tapestries, which are still so colourful despite being woven so long ago (early 16th century.) As well as the Lady and her trusty lion and unicorn, each tapestry has lots of different animals like dogs, monkeys and rabbits. The tapestries are in the style of “mille-fleurs” so have many different small flowers all over the background. They must have taken so much time and effort to make, and they were much more beautiful in real life than in paintings I have seen of them. When we left the museum in the early afternoon there were many more people arriving, so we were glad that we had gone in the morning. It wasn’t far to walk to the Tuileries and the rain had stopped so we had a nice stroll through the gardens. I spontaneously suggested that we go to nearby Angelina on the rue du Rivoli, since we had enjoyed the Louvre branch so much last year. We only had to wait a few minutes and had a lovely light lunch. And then onto the Metro to our hotel to collect our case before walking to the Gare du Nord, which didn’t take long at all. The Eurostar waiting room was nicer than the London one, and we sat and read our books for a while before being called to board the train. Again we had good seats; this time I was more awake as we whizzed though Northern France and James kept track of where we were, using Google Maps. So we saw the River Somme as the train crossed it, not too far from where we were in April. At one point I noticed on the train information display that we were going at 295 km per hour; so fast! When we went through the Channel tunnel it was so strange to think that we were underneath the English Channel with all that water pressing down on us! We got back to the flat in less than forty minutes from St Pancras station and had a cup of tea with Ally and Cat before bedtime. They ate some of the macarons that we made in Galeries Lafayette and said that they were delicious! What a whirlwind of two days we have had!