So, it appears that I’ll be in Paris from May 26-May 29 with my best friend’s family. There will be five of us. BF, daughter (age 15) and I are more interested in artsy stuff and already have a list started.
BF’s husband and son (age 17) are from the geekier side of the family (hubby is an electrical engineer and son might as well be).
I’d love to be able to add some unusual stops to our itinerary.
Recommendations? Non-geeky answers also welcome!
Thanks in advance.
Musée des Arts et des Métiers. Even the metro stop is straight outta Jules Verne.
Le Laboratoire? I haven’t actually been myself but I saw one of its founders speak, it basically sounds like a combination art gallery and science museum so perhaps the whole family will enjoy it.
I believe you can see the original Foucault pendulum at the Pantheon, and while it’s not engineer type geekery, I think one of the geekiest things in Paris is ["]Deyrolle](Deyrolle: The Strangest Shop in All of Paris Photo Gallery by big al at pbase.com[/URL), a taxidermy shop/museum.
There’s a museum devoted to the sewers of Paris. There’s a place in the suburbs that has the reference kilogram, although I don’t know if they host visitors. And this is the science museum.
Cool ideas!
Forgot to mention that everyone (except me) is a musician (cellists and violinists). (I’m the audience. :)) Any suggestions for cool music? Preferably classical, but jazz would do, too.
Thanks for the suggestions!
If you’re wanting to find music, you may just want to pick up a Frommers, Rick Steves, or Let’s Go guide. It will be full of suggestions. And there are the opera houses; I’ve heard that you can buy cheap tickets shortly before the shows start.
I recommend the the Catacombs, long tunnels in an abandoned gypsum mine filled with skeletons, skulls, and bones. Absolutely awesome.
You may also like Les Invalides, where Napolean is buried. It has a military muesum and some medieval armor. Pretty cool.
I know there’s a child-centric science muesum on the outskirts of Paris, but I can’t find it on wikipedia at the moment.
I’ve been to Paris twice, and each time, the people I traveled with refused to go to Parc Asterix with me. I think that’s pretty geeky, especially since I want to go solely because I love Asterix, who helped teach me French in high school and college.
You can take a train out ot Le Bourget and go to the French Air and Space Museum.
(Do your research in advance. It’s a mile or more from the train station to the museum, and the location to catch the bus is not well marked.)
I was unimpressed by the science museum. Here is something you may never have heard about. There is a textile factory, Gobelins, that has (or used to; I don’t know if they still do) demos every Thursday morning that my wife and daughter visited and were blown away by. Since May 28 is a Thursday, you could try it.
Warning: it is conducted in French only. My wife and daughter are both fluent.
There’s the world’s smallest museum, dedicated to musician Erik Satie- Musée-Placard d’Erik Satie though the hours are by appointment only, it’s free.
The medieval museum, which is on the edge of the Uni, is usually deserted when I go there. They’ve got the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. It’s the Musée de Cluny (Musée du Moyen-Âge).
There is also the Musée Fragonard, housed at the Veterinary School, which contains anatomical specimens much like those travelling in the Bodyworlds exhibits, though over 200 years old. It’s a medical museum andnot for the squeamish, though.
There’s a fair amount of free or cheap classical music, often in churches. A weekly listings-magazine called Pariscope (new issue every Wednesday, available at any news kiosk) will tell you what’s available.
Seconding this. It’s a unique experience.
You could also. take the Metro out to La Defence and go up La Grande Arche. There’s a small computer museum (and spectacular views) at the top.
A few bits of helpful advice. Buy a Paris Visite card when you arrive. This will give you unlimited travel on all of Paris’ public transport. You could also buy a Museum Pass. It cuts down on the waiting in line. The kid won’t need one as museums are normally free to the under 18s.
There’s no need to tip in restaurants (it’s included in the price).
Rick Steves is a musician, from a family of musicians. So his shows & books are music-filled. A contributor to his website wrote about the pipe organ at St Sulpice. There are regular concerts & it’s possible to see the organist at work.
Sounds like a great place for Music Geeks!
ETA: Here’s Rick’s own account of St Sulpice.
It used to be possible to get a tour of the sewers (it’s not as bad as it sounds), not sure if you still can.
I always wanted to go into the catacombs, maybe one day I will re-visit Paris.
Wow! Thanks for all the cool suggestions. St. Sulpice sounds amazing; wish we were going to be there on a Sunday.
I have the Rick Steves Paris guide book, but won’t get to read it much until I’m at the airport.
I’m getting even more excited about this!
There are just magnificent art works at Musee d’Orsay! I believe it used to be a train station. Lots of impressionists amd well-known pieces.
Père Lachaise Cemetery is a trip! It is near where the Bastille was (and the New Opera House). It seems to me that most of Paris’s famous are buried there and some of the sites are strange in themselves. The lipstrick prints on Oscar Wilde’s large stone, for example. You can buy a little book about it before you go and pick out which places you want to see. Jim Morrison is also buried there. A discreet guard is posted nearby because of prior vandalism done to his grave. But all in all, it is a lovely, shady walk.
Our favorite thing was going to Monet’s house and garden about fifty or sixty miles out of France. It’s easily arranged by train and bus. You feel like you are literally walking around in his paintings. It is overwhelming. And the colors in his house and charming!
Somewhere around Pon Neuf, take the steps that go from the bridge down to the waters edge where you can walk close to the river.
The best trips are the night cruises down the Seine. Paris at night is unbelievable!
If you want to be grusome, you can go through the tunnel where Diana was killed. Our driver went out of his way to do that to us unexpectedly.
You can go to Harry’ Bar (near the old Opera House) where the Bloody Mary was invented.
The usual tourist cafes: Cafe de Flores and Cafe le Deux Magot (am I getting that one right?
The are both the the St. Germain du Pres area somewhat near Blvd. Michel or “Bull Mick” as it is known. Sarte held sway in one and Hemingway and the literary crowd met in another.
Speaking of the literary crowd, my favorite bookstore in the world is right across from Notre Dame. It is called Shakespeare and Company. Check a book for the exact address. At another location (until the Nazis came) this was Literary Central. Hemingway got his mail here. Joyce published Ulysseus here. The atmosphere of the new location is still vibrating and a photograph of the interior hands on my wall. If Mr. Whitman is still living upstairs, he loves company.
I sat outside under a cherry tree in full blossom when the bells of Notre Dame started calling the people to mass. A little wind came up and made the blossoms swirl around me. Just unearthly beauty. The bells started tolling at 4:45 PM, btw.
The food is good everywhere. We didn’t have a bad meal.
I tried to go there, but it was so packed that I couldn’t even get in the door. Of course, it was Easter, though, so that might be an anomaly.
Currently, Shakespeare and Co is at 37 Rue de la Bucherie. They used to be at Rue de L’Odeon. They are always rammed full of people and while the student manning register might not be nice, the rest of the people are (used to be the case you could stay for a while if you worked downstairs).
Of interest may be Sylvia Beach’s memoir, also called ‘Shakespeare and Company’, which details her life from minister’s daughter in New Jersey to Hanging out with Joyce and being ‘liberated’ at the end of WWII by Hemingway.
A connected spot would be the lovely, though expensive these days, Closerie des Lilas. Le Dome is also lovely and more affordable.
I don’t know if this is your geek style, of course, but I thought I’d put a word out for Parc Asterix, which this very geeky family loved. It’s a theme park based on the world of the Asterix comic books, which means among other things some great history-based humor and a whole lot of fake Latin. The rides and shows are pretty darn good, too, but I could walk around all day just laughing at the TOILETTUM signs 
How geeky, exactly? There are many, many game stores in Paris, filled with folks who do nothing but play strategy games all day.
Descartes Ecoles
52, Rue des Ecoles
75005 - Paris
Tel: 01 43 26 79 83
Fax: 01 43 26 98 61
There is another, I can’t put my finger on it. Let me look around some.