Day 2 of Museum Extravaganza!

22 September 2012

Happy day 2 of my museum-weekend-palooza! Today I met up with Julie, Paige, and Katie, and together we all took a bus ride down to the gorgeous little town of Vizille where we had plans to visit the French Revolution Museum.

The day started off to a great start on the bus that had no air conditioning on this gloriously hot day. Add in the incredibly bumpy and swervy roads, and we were in carsick heaven. =) But no worries: We arrived in Vizille a very long and daunting forty five minutes later, and the beauty of this little town made every second of that bus ride worth it. As soon as we stepped off the bus, we were welcomed by fields of grass stretching to the mountains on one side, and on the other side were the beautiful buildings that made of the town of Vizille. We walked into town and decided to stop for lunch before doing anything else, and we did just that. We found a very pleasant outdoor restaurant, and I ordered and thoroughly enjoyed a chicken sandwich with fries and a coca cola. After recharging with such a delicious lunch, we went across the street, past a few statues, fountains, and boutiques, and entered the park that stretched out in front of the French Revolution Museum (which is actually a chateau from the times of the French Revolution!). Before even stepping foot into the museum, we gazed across the gorgeous park for what seemed like an hour. A small lake with a stream that swerved between towering sycamore trees, triangular-trimmed bushes lining vividly colored flowerbeds, and adorable little park benches dotted alongside the stream, where elderly couples tossed bread crumbs to the swans drifting in the stream. We decided to hurry into the museum and check it out before enjoying the garden and the park. We knew if we explored it now, we would never find time to come back to the museum. That and Julie was lost in a "I want to get married here!" daydream, and we wanted to get inside before she got hitched with some random French man.

We went into the glorious chateau and started our exploration of the French Revolution Museum. This is a moment I have really been looking forward to. There has always been something about the French Revolution that just inspired me. I was always interested by the entire history of the Revolution, especially the life and history of Marie Antoinette. And now here I am in a museum dedicated specifically to the French Revolution! How exciting! 

The first few rooms we went through featured fine china plates and other dishware salvaged from the nobles that lived during the Revolution, and there were also paintings that featured the very same nobles. There were also small displays of statues and figurines that these nobles also owned. Despite the beauty of all of these small things, it was easy to see why the common-men and lower class citizens of France during the Revolution held such a grudge towards the nobility of their time. Some peasants could not even afford a simple loaf of bread, meanwhile the nobles of France were able to afford and purchase fine china just because they could. 

The next room we went into displayed some artifacts from when the Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789. There was a small replica of the Bastille itself, and there were also displays of the swords, guns, drums, and pikes that were involved in the storming of the Bastille. It's one thing to hear about the storming, such an important day in French history, but it's completely different to actually see the weapons used during the storming, and see paintings of the important leaders involved as well. It really enforces the idea that this is more than just history that you read about in a textbook, all if this really happened.

As we continued onward, we saw some very large paintings that portrayed the various events where citizens gathered together to create new constitutions, to rebel in the streets, to fight for their rights and their freedoms, etc. Call me crazy, but a lot of these paintings and the chaos and hubbub they portrayed looked incredibly familiar to the strikes that one can see continuing even today in France. I wonder where the French get it from... oh that's right, the Revolution!

As we went further into the museum, we saw more paintings that portrayed other important events that took place during the French Revolution: Charlotte Corday murdering Jean-Paul Marat, Marie Antoinette being escorted to her execution (I may or may not have been devastated by that painting), etc. There was also one wall that featured marble slates, and inscribed on each of them were the articles written for the first official French constitution, including Article I, declared August 26, 1789: Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits; les distinctions sociales ne peuvent être fondées que sur l'utilité publique. In other words (English words, for example), all men are born free and equal. Well doesn't that sound familiar! =P

I was so impressed by the French Revolution Museum, and I am so glad that I was able to visit. But after exploring history, it was time to explore some of nature's beauty - back into the park we went! The park was still as beautiful as it was a few hours earlier, but even more beautiful now that we were able to walk through it. The four of us walked for a long while in almost complete silence. We were all captivated by the beauty of this park. We stopped by a few benches in the shade of four sycamore trees (which represented the four of us and our friendship, obviously - they saw us coming!) and sat down to relax and enjoy a short mid-afternoon daydream in the park. None of us wanted to leave...we just wanted to stay forever, smiling under the sycamores, watching the swans glide down the stream, shivering in the occasional breeze that rolled through the park...we were truly living in a dream. However, due to the bus schedule that left us with only one last bus to catch that would take us home to Grenoble, we had to leave and head back into town. But we did manage to pass by three, not one, not two, but three weddings in the park, which made Paige, Katie and I overjoyed, and made Julie even more "wedding-bells-in-the-park" obsessed. We may or may not have had to forcefully drag her out of the park...

We went back into town, and I grabbed a raspberry and vanilla ice cream cone, which was probably one of the best ice cream cones I have ever had in my life, and when the bus arrived, we hopped on and voyaged back to our home-sweet-home-in-France, Grenoble. =)