The doll museum in Paris

I suggested we go to le Musée de la Poupée because we were meeting up with my brother-in-law, his wife and their 4-year-old daughter that day, and it seemed like something that would interest all the kids.

Little did I know that I would LOVE it as much as I did. I am strongly recommending it if you go to Paris with children and even if you are on your own.

( pictures behind the cut )

And then there was the temporary exhibition, and I wish I could find words to express the wonder we felt when we saw this. We knew it would be about Ken and Barbie through the ages, but I expected something FAO Schwartz-like, with traditional Barbie and Ken dolls in their traditional Barbie and Ken outfits.

We were entirely wrong. What we saw was the work of Claude Brabant, a very talented lady who decided to take famous paintings and re-create them by re-making the clothes herself and using Barbie and Ken as the main protagonists.

( Barbie and Ken as Cleopatra and Caesar, St Louis and Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth and Mary Stuart and Catherine de Médicis and more... )

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The Paris métro has a very distinctive smell. It's not a very nice smell and many people wrinkle their noses at it, but it still brings tears to my eyes and a big smile to my face every single time. I love it instinctively and irrationally, see, because it's not just a common subway smell of garbage and dirt and smelly armpits (sorry), it's the métro's very breath. It spells PARIS in my brain in big flashing electric letters. It's not a common smell -- the Toronto Rocket smells entirely unlike the Paris metro, and the same applies to the NYC underground (which smells like red white hot hotness of doom).

I had assumed it just ... belonged to the Paris métro, but then last March I took the subway in DC with selkie and olliefree, and the DC subway smells exactly like the Paris metro! So I turned to selkie and expressed my surprise. selkie nodded wisely and said, "oh, you mean the smell of fried rodents? Yeah, sometimes the rats hit the third rail and there you go. BBQ rats! Nasty, isn't it?"

So yeah. Sadly enough, among the many smells that are dear to my heart (and include the smell of newborn baby and freshly baked croissants), there is "electrified rodent".

I wonder what that says about me.

(This rat-related post is brought to you curtesy of Sam's Adventures With A Rat, which reminded me of my own rat adventures...)