Old time bikes at Musée des Arts et Métiers.

Once again my plans on Wednesday seemed to have matched those on Monday by not going strictly to plan (due mainly to my somewhat inability to read a text message), but yet somehow managing to be salvaged into a moderate success.

After rushing to show up one and a half hours early to my lunch appointment with friends in the Etienne Marcel area I had the following options

• Sit on my arse in McBrides and drink a bad coffee
• Walk around les halles and look at €5 shoes – and spend money I don’t have, on things I don’t really want. 
• Cut my losses and high tail it over to a museum before lunch.

As you can tell there was not much hesitating involved and after a quick scan of the ever handy Paris Museum Pass Guide I assessed that my best option would be to go to the nearest by Musée des Arts et Metiers. While I have been to this museum on more than several occasions I will confess that most of those visits were limited to the temporary “Games” exhibition. Which was essentially just a glorified Arcade with the a great selection of games consoles chronicling the start of the movement (pong) to its current pinnacle (the Xbox 360?).

So with no temporary exhibition and a quick flash of my passport I was in. Now for those of you who don't speak “le Francais” this museum is dedicated to Mechanics and Trades, often showing the first version of things that we use and take for granted now.

For example:

TVs - apparently they were round.

Telephones

 

Batteries

Ryanair

And my personal favourite.....Bicycles and even a Velib’ (I'm not going to picture it).

mmmm. lots of bikes

wooden bike - don't get this wet

oldtimey big wheel small wheel bike

early suspension bikes

 As well as lots of cool models and machines and other science and engineering things. Is it a bat? Or is it a plane? Wait, its.... a Batplane.

eat your heart out Tim Burton

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this visit and managed to discover an entire new wing I had never visited before, as well as finally managing to go to the top most platform in the very impressive church part of the museum which houses the planes and cars. 

This museum is not as frequented as some of the other more main stream museums and not only did I not have to queue for my ticket but I often found myself peacefully alone in most of the exhibition rooms. With 1 hour and 15 minutes I managed to visit most of the museum and happily left for lunch with a picture of me and Miss liberty.

Also worth a mention is the limited, but always available bicycle parking on the right hand side of the entrance to the museum.