Grape Expectations

This weekend we visited the wine museum in Paris. We have fun seeking out offbeat museums, and this one certainly qualified as 'offbeat'.

It is located in cellars dug out by monks in the 15-16th century underneath the Passy area of Paris. Monks hug out, making their wine and storing it in these caverns for a few hundred years. Like a lot of religious sites, the monastery was destroyed in the French Revolution. The cellars survived, and now house the museum and a restaurant. It is a really atmospheric setting for the museum, wandering around in the cellars. It was a little freaky, they had maneqiuns set up depicting winemaking, and they kept freaking me out when I'd round a corner and see one (we were the only ones in the museum, so it was a little spooky exploring by ourselves anyway).

The museum contained various vineyard tools, grape harvesting and squishing implements, chemistry bits (for 'balancing the wine'), pichets, glasses for all types of wine, a bazillion different corkscrews, and a cognac distillery (distillery in upper left of picture).

The museum price includes a free glass of wine. Sante!

On Sunday we did a really fun walk. We started at Champs Elysees close to Grand Palais, walked down through the middle of Place de Concorde, thru Tuileries gardens (pausing to watch pony rides and have ice cream), up through the Louvre courtyard, over Pont Neuf, along Ile de la Cite (and the gardening shops), along Ile St. Louis, and cross back towards Bastille at blvd Henri IV. I could just walk forever here.