La Villette

During our last week in Paris, we finally made it out to Cité de la Villette, which is even more enormous than I realized. It has several museums, a park, and a geode IMAX theater.

We started with the Musée de la Musique, which Max had really been wanting to see. I didn't know what to expect, and I was quite impressed with their collection of beautiful instruments (4 floors).

The amount of ornamentation and detail on the clavichords is truly amazing.

Blurry photo, but check out the keys on this one! I wish my black keys had stripes!

The blacks and whites are reversed on this keyboard.

We saw guitars that were equally ornate. Inlaid wood necks!

Look at the incredible carving behind the strings. Unbelievable.

Max was particularly curious about this "experimental cello." I wonder what it sounds like?

They have several miniature sets that kept Eva entertained. Just one of many reasons we wished we could have brought Kristen to this museum!

During our visit, we were fortunate enough to see a live musician. We were his only audience for awhile, and he was very gracious. He would stop playing and tell us about his instrument, a théorbe. According to Wickipedia, its English name is theorbo and it's related to the lute. The music was beautiful. He showed us his sheet music, and it was completely incomprehensible to me. Fascinating.

If Jill had a centuries-old grand piano (or clavichord, perhaps), she would need this smashing red & black model!

I loved this little musician's toolkit.

This is a finger gym! A plethora of exercises to keep the fingers nimble and strong. Never seen anything like it.

Max had read about this octo-bass and was excited to see it in person. Nothing could prepare us for how huge it was! We heard a recording of what it sounds like when played and the notes were the lowest I've ever heard.

I was completely smitten with the back of this violin.

After spending a couple of hours in the music museum, we walked through the park over to the Cité des Sciences.

Unfortunately, at this point the hands-on exhibits for younger kids were going to close shortly and they wouldn't sell us tickets for them. Eva especially was disappointed, but we salvaged the visit by going to the vision exhibit.

It had tons of optical illusion type games and all kinds of activities designed to teach about the way our eyes work and respond to light.




Every station had instructions that were, of course, in French, which required my translating skills. This proved difficult as the kids all wanted to go to different stations so they could each be doing something at the same time. At this point I was having excruciating knee pain and could barely hobble around. Needless to say, I was definitely ready to leave before the kids were.

La Villette is a place we will explore further in the future!