In which we seek the past

It occurs to me that we have only three more days in Paris before we leave for Nice, and that, furthermore, I am a full week behind on my blog, which means that I probably need to write a lot of posts in the next few days, especially as I am not completely confident that we will have internet at our apartment in Nice. (Though I should be able to use my iPhone to set up a hotspot and run things that way, at least a little bit.)

On Sunday, when we were trudging to the RER station at Notre Dame-Saint Michael, enroute to the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, Ezio suddenly stopped in front of the Notre Dame Crypt and said, "There's an archeology museum in Paris? Do they have Roman stuff there? I want to go." And so on Thursday we found ourselves traipsing back over toward the RER station to head underground to the Crypte archéologique du Paris and check out the Roman ruins, as well as ruins of early and medieval French buildings, most of them still in their original locations under the Parvis de Notre Dame (the big open space in front of the Cathedral). The crypt is for me one of the more interesting places to visit, because, in comparison with many of the museums in Paris it is fairly new (opened in 1980) and because we have gone to it every time we have been in Paris (1999, 2007, 2010, 2013) and every time we go the museum has been improved in some significant way. The first time we went, there were just ruins to look at with brief descriptions. In 2007 they had added artists' interpretations of how some of the buildings had looked when they were in use. By 2010 there was something about the history of Paris, and the way in which the population had moved from the left bank, to the Île-de-la-Cité, to the right bank, before eventually spreading over all of what is currently Paris. And this time, best of all, they had added this, a 3D exploration of the Roman baths and another of Notre Dame (and the website has many more:  the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Bastille, etc.). I highly (highly, highly) recommend that you check out the page, and scroll down to see all of the cool stuff on it (you'll want to be on a fast web connection to do so, since it's pretty graphics intensive).

On the way home afterward, we walked through the park behind Notre Dame and over to the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, which commemorates the 200,000 men, women, and children who were deported from France and died in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. It was a moving and somewhat eerie experience, and even the kids came up feeling somewhat subdued. That lasted, naturally, for at least 5 seconds, but at least we managed to get away from the entrance to the memorial before the questions started flying.

Best of all though, Blaise flew back from Pisa, and then went straight to a talk, without even stopping by the apartment to see us. But, he texted us once the talk was over, and we met at L'As du Fallafel, which is about a 20 minute walk from our apartment, for dinner.