L'invalide: le musee d'armee et le Musee Rodin
Tuesday, May 10th: part two of walk
Today since the weather wasn't all too pretty, we decided to finish up the walk we started yesterday and go the the Museums at les Invalides. We started with the musee de Rodin, which is a chateau that houses the works from the sculpture Rodin who did the Thinker. The set up was nice. There's a garden that surrounds the chateau and the size of the chateau isn't too large, but is large enough to be important. It was pretty cool. Carson and I ended up finishing before the others so after eating lunch we moved on to the musee de l'armee at l'hotel des Invalides. This place is huge! We could spend a whole day there. As it was we spent about two-three hours looking around the first section: the middle ages. This museum focuses on the history of war.  Saw lots of cool things. We saw the church and the tomb of Napoleon before we decided that we'd just have to come back another day to see the rest. It's a really cool museum. After going home, we've just done homework and started working on the first midterm. Thankfully it's a take home test and we can use our notes from class. Our host family left us dinner, though they were out somewhere. It was super good. Another good day. Natalie and Jessica started with us, but they didn't go to the musee de l'armee because there was a protest going on. They ended up going home instead.  Protests are a common thing here and can get quite crazy. We're told to stay way from them. There were a lot of cops there today. Lovely adventures in Paris.

 

 
The beautiful bridge de Alexandre by les Invalides. It's quite an elaborate bridge which was constructed to symbolize the newly agreed on alliance between Russia and France in the late Nineteenth century. It's one of the most elaborate in Paris.

L'Hotel des Invalides was constructed by order of  king Louis XIV to house sick or hurt veterans that came back from the wars. Today part of it is still used as a hospital for veterans, while the other part is used for the museum l'armee. Pretty cool eh? This place is huge in case you were wondering and has a church in the center that houses Napoleon Bonaparte's remains in a giant coffin. Literally,the coffin is huge.

 
Le musee de Rodin. These are the gardens outside the museum. The museum was a chateau built in the 1720s that eventually came into the sculpture, Rodin's possession. It was his wish that it be turned into a school/museum for his work. The statue on the left is the Thinker and the statues on the right are leaders during the hundred years war that sacrificed themselves to the British in order to save their people.

These are the three shades that await those who come to Hell's Gate. Yes it's inspired form Dante's Inferno.

I'm at Hell's Gate. You can't really tell from this picture, but this piece is really quite amazing and truly scary. The emotions portrayed through the images on the gate with the thinker looking over it all is insane. This is the original thinker people. Right here on Hell's gate.

On a happier note, this is me hanging with Victor Hugo. He's a grumpy fellow.

Me with the Thinker. Nailed it. :)

The church at l'hotel des Invalides. It's quite amazing.

 
Le musee de l'armee: museum of war, the middle ages section. The sword is either the sword that belonged to Constantine or made to look just like his by someone who lived in the middle ages. I couldn't quite figure out which one it was.

I could have crawled inside this cannon, that's how big it is.

For the record,About half of the weapons I saw in this museum were taller than me.

My night in shining armor!!! I think i'm in love.

Help!!!!!

Look at this cannon! it's a revolving cannon! How sweet is that?

The lighting in the museum was terrible, but these swords are awesome!!!

A bunch of medieval helmets. We found the perfect one for Carson. The second one from the top left with the mustache! :)

 
Found another helmet with a mustache! :)

Class picture turned out well don't you think?

Again, not the best picture, but not m fault. Look, thre's even children's armor!

It's a legit hunting horn!!!!!!

These knives are pretty elaborate and cool.

See the rifles on the bottom/. They're taller than Carson! or at least as tall as him. They were used to go mass duck hunting. Someone would lay down in a boat with the gun and shoot flocks of ducks when they were scared from the water.

 

 Cool looking knives that as McKenna stated well, reminds me of the sword from Mulan. It is from Asia after all.  

 A close up of Carson's helmet. :) Sometimes I wonder at the practicality of the armor these people were wearing.

King Louis XIV 's armor. Armor like this declined in popularity as fire arms came into use and were basically a thing of the past soon after the thirty years war. Half suits of armor were still used for a while for hand to hand combat and armor was still used for jousting.

 

 

I found Napoleon's tomb!!! It would be hard to miss. This man had a serious ego. The tomb could fit at least four people and it's smack dab in the middle of the church.
The church is beautiful, but nearly as elaborate as other churches I've seen here. Lots of cool people were buried here, such as both Napoleon's.