Musee des Arts et Metiers & The Museum of Hunting and Nature

Yesterday was a crazyyy museum day with Rachael and Sarah. We hit up two off the beaten path museums, both in the Marais, and they were both excellent.

We started out our day in the Musee des Arts et Metiers (Arts and Crafts, but a better translation would be Arts and Sciences), which almost has too many historical machines to look at.

Also, the coolest thing about this museum is that the modern section of the building is connected to the former church St. Martin-des-Champs, which is beautiful and painted inside, and which gives the museum an entire different feel from others:

Airplanes "flying" around inside!

Then we headed to the Musee de la Chasse & de la Nature (The Museum of Hunting and Nature), which is a small private museum which was really great as well.

All of the rooms are themed around a specific animal, and those rooms have taxidermy, medieval tapestries, little art pieces and painting in gold frames, and interactive areas for kids -- most of rooms felt like you were in a fancy living room, and it felt more like a history museum than a science museum. It was hard to capture on film and sort of art to describe, but I really liked it. 

There was also a big game room (with every large animal animal) EVER mounted to a wall. I recommend both museums. 

Also, my friend Jackie (whom I studied abroad with in Bordeaux) arrived yesterday, and she's in Paris for a whole MONTH to do research for her PhD, so I'm really excited to re-live some adventures with her!