Weekend festivals

The French do seem to love a good festival. It seems that every weekend is full of some exciting public event. Here's a rundown of what we've been up to in the last few weekends.

Journées du patrimoine

The journées du patrimoine ("days of heritage") are actually a Europe-wide program, a celebration of culture and history. This manifests itself in various talks and events, but principally in that many public buildings and museums open their doors for people to come inside and have a look around. You can visit the Senate, the Italian Embassy, or even see behind-the-scenes at the Métro stations. This year's heritage days were three weekends ago, the 19th and 20th of September. We knew that it was coming up, but I must confess that we had just forgotten about it and neglected to go anywhere interesting! Still, it didn't stop scores of French people from having a relaxed and culturally enlightening weekend.

Journée sans voiture

The Sunday of the following weekend was the journée sans voiture ("day without cars"), a new experiment in Paris where cars were banned from the streets. The ban was only applied in some of the central arrondisements, and buses and taxis were still able to drive around, although there were a few streets where vehicles were banned entirely. You can see some before-and-after videos here.

Talia and I cycled down from our flat (where we had contend with cars on the road, how ignoble!) and headed into the centre of the city, where the atmosphere was like that of a public festival. There were street performers, musicians, and a load of people walking and cycling around. We took some time to pop into a Scottish Pub to watch the rugby (which Talia has agreed is a lot more fun to watch than American Football). We were able to see the second half of Scotland's victory over the USA in the Rugby world cup, which was very fun.

Inside the Scottish pub, rugby on the TV.

Paris is normally a very easy city to cycle in, and I'll probably write a post sometime about cycling here. But on the journée sans voiture, it was even easier. With no cars around, no thundering masses of traffic, it was simple and relaxing to bike from place to place. I certainly hope that this becomes a regular Paris tradition.

Nuit blanche

The next weekend, this most recent Saturday was nuit blanche. The name literally means "white night" but it's the French expression for an all-nighter. Here, various public buildings open themselves up to the public, and there are several arts and musical events put on all around the city. The difference here is that it begins at around 7pm, and continues until around 6am!

A short from beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

We found an event we wanted to go to, la Nuit du Quator à l'Orangerie (night of quartets at the Orangerie), a series of string quartet performances in an art gallery surrounded by Monet's paintings of water lilies. It began at 7pm, finished at 6am, and had a different quartet playing each hour. How exciting! However, once we got there, the queue was huge and they were only letting in so many people per hour. There was very little chance that'd we'd get to go in (at least not before 1 or 2am, and we didn't really want to stay out that late), so instead we went for a wander through central Paris. Instead of going to a rugby pub and watching Scotland's defeat at the hands of South Africa, we instead walked up the Champs-Elysée to the Arc de Triomphe, one of the few major Paris monuments that we haven't yet visited. Afterwards, we slowly made our way home, stopping for dessert in a local café. Not the night we had planned, but an extremely enjoyable one nonetheless.

Dessert! This is a café gourmand, a coffee (espresso) with three different miniature desserts to sample.

Free museums

For Americans, the sheer number of free or discounted museums in Paris may seem overwhelming. For Brits too perhaps, although some cities (notably Glasgow) have made a strong commitment to keeping a preponderance of free museums. Notably (and relevant for today's post), there are several museums in Paris which normally charge for entry, but are free on the first Sunday of the month. (There are a few also which are only free on the first Sunday of the month at certain times of the year. For example, The Louvre is free on the first Sunday of the month from October to March.)

Yesterday, the day after nuit blanche, was the first Sunday of the month. Not wanting to squander this opportunity (there are, after all, only 12 first Sundays every year), Talia and I biked down to the Musée des Arts et Métiers. Its name literally means "Museum of Arts and Crafts", but it's basically a museum of science and industry, with exhibits on scientific instruments, materials, energy, mechanics, communication, construction, and transport. Each section takes you on a historical tour from the pre-industrial days (before 1750) up to the modern era.

The outside of the Musée des Arts et Métiers. Yes, that's a converted church on the left.

Although we got in for free, we paid to get a little audio guide, which gives you extra information on each exhibit as you go through. It was well worth it; as well as providing extra background information on some of the more interesting artefacts (such as Clément Ader's steam-powered aircraft), it also provided historical and economic overviews of the importance of particular innovations in industrial processes, such as the use of regenerative heating in blast furnaces, or how precisely a Koenig Sound Analyser works. (The sound analyser pre-dates the oscilloscope, yet allows for frequency decomposition of sound, which is really cool.)

After the tour of the museum, we then visited the nearby Musée Carnavalet, a museum which chronicles the history of Paris. This museum is free all the time! We didn't spend a lot of time there, although we got to see several rooms full of various historical artefacts, and then a large exhibit on the history of the French revolution. The revolution exhibit was very interesting since it held lots of contemporary ephemera from the era - paintings and cartoons, newspaper printings, popular ceramics made to commemorate particular events. Given how rapidly public and political opinion changed between 1789 and 1795, it was fascinating to see those little snapshots of history memorialised for the future.

Finally, on our way home we bumped into another demonstration. Unlike the previous one documented on this blog, this one was in Place de la Bastille and was in support of immigrants and refugees. There were various people there from all sorts of organizations, although sadly no tractors this time. We snapped a few pictures, but you can see some professional ones here.

His sign reads "no person is illegal".

Next weekend

What exciting festival is in store for us next weekend? Thursday the 8th to Monday the 11th is in fact la fête de tournez les taureaux, "the festival of turning bulls". Yes, the Turnbulls are coming to visit - we'll be hosting my parents for a long weekend. If it's anything like the last few weekends, we're in for a treat!