Museums with a small Harry Potter detour

After our busy day yesterday, we started our day a little later than usual with crepes and omelets for brunch, which were, of course, accompanied by.....wait for it....frites.  I have officially turned into a French fry; although, here it is just called a fry.  I promise that I am not trying to order them.  They just come with everything.  It is a good thing that we are walking miles and miles each day.  

After brunch, we headed to the Palais de la Decouverte, or Discovery Museum.  It was a really cool science museum that blew SciWorks out of the water.  They even have a "rat school" where they have trained the rats to do unusual  things.  The rat we saw was about the size of an opossum.  Yikes!  Of course, the kids thought it was so "cute".  We also experienced a French planetarium show.  The planetarium was the only part of the museum that was air conditioned, so we got settled in, the lights dimmed, a man with a lovely voice spoke French to us, and most of us took a little nap.  It was decadent.  

Then, we headed toward the Musee de l'Armee and the Invalides, which houses Napoleon's tomb.  The boys wanted to see the military museum and the girls wanted to see the Musee Rodin, which was right next door, so we split up.  The Musee Rodin was a beautiful sculpture garden displaying lots of Rodin's finest works.  I have always enjoyed Rodin's work, so this was really enjoyable for me. We did see "The Thinker", but I didn't take a picture of it.  Too cliche...  Instead, you get this picture of the girls, so you can see the beauty of the grounds.  Sorry that I chose a sculpture with a bum staring you in the face (a body part bum, not a street beggar):

Maybe you will find this picture of Hadley a little more appropriate.  She was imitating the pose of the statue "like Aunt Jodie usually does."

We met back up with the boys at Napoleon's tomb.  I don't have any pics of this.  Napoleon is not one of my favorite people, but please don't tell that to anyone here. 

We headed to the Centre Pompidou, which is a really funky building with all of the pipes, duct work, etc. on the outside.  We ate dinner in a cafe facing the square, and we dined on hamburgers and...altogether, now...frites.  Next was the really exciting part of the evening for us Harry Potter fans.  We tracked down the actual house of the real Nicholas Flamel and his wife, Perenelle.  If you don't know who this is, read the first Harry Potter book.  I refuse to explain it to you, because I think everyone should read those books.  The house was established in 1407 and is still standing.  It has very interesting carvings above and around the doorway. 

We attempted to head back to the Centre Pompidou to ride the glass escalators to the top of the building for the amazing view, but it was closed.  That was probably a good thing, because Jack and Hadley began to melt down from several busy days in a row. Tomorrow should be a more leisurely day.