Day 66 - Musee d'Histoire Naturelle and Musee Archeologique
/I love how much our kids, and I am sure most kids this age, enjoy arts and crafts. When I was a kid, since there were no iPads, video games (ok there was Atari but we didn't have one), or unlimited hours of children programming on TV, I mainly either drew or played outside. Because I have such fond memories of spending hours upon hours drawing a picture and coloring it in (well to be honest most times I skipped the coloring part), I like to encourage the kids to sit down and draw on real paper using real color pencils/crayons/markers, instead of on an iPad app.
This morning, Kian sat down and drew our family, with daddy portrayed as a cool skateboarder dude (but not too cool for a helmet of course).
In the afternoon, we walked all around town and checked out the Museum of Natural History (Musee d'Histoire Naturelle) as well as the Museum of Archeology (Musee Archeologique). The Museum of Natural History has a neanderthal exhibit at the moment that we were able to check out as well.
Both museums are fairly small, and you would likely not need more than an hour to check everything out. We really enjoyed the exhibit, as it is very well put together, albeit a little small. They also had a section that described the theory of evolution in pictures. Explaining this to Kian resulted in many many follow up questions.
Travel Tip: Good news and bad news. The good news is that the museum is free and the exhibit was only 3 Euros per adult (children were free). The bad news for non French speaking people, like ourselves, is that all signs and explanations are in French only.
Because we couldn't understand any of the signs, we just walked around and looked at the animals (the kids' favorite section), the building/town models, and the statues.
Both museums are conveniently located in the center of town, in the same building even, with the exhibit only steps away. After the museum, we took the kids to check out the "waterball", which they have been patiently requesting to go on ever since they first saw it a few weeks back. The waterballs are big, plastic inflated balls that float over a small and shallow pool of water. Kids can stand up and run around in the ball to move around, but balancing is no easy task. Hannah at first wanted to go, but after watching Kian getting in, quickly changed her mind and opted for the carousel located in the same area.
We took the long way back home and finally satiated our hunger for a chocolate crepe at the crepe stand by Les Jardins de la Fontaine. Mmm Mmm delish!
Once home, I made raviolis, grilled eggplant, and grilled chicken for dinner. When I went to take a picture of the food Hannah yelled out, "I have to take a picture of my food"!
Oh dear! I have created a monster! :)
