Saturday, July 20, 2013

A Miscellaneous Day

Have you noticed our days often have themes or common threads?  No matter what I tried today, I couldn't make it happen.  This is what happens when you start scrambling to make sure your vacation to-do list is all checked off.

We started today by studying war.  The Musée Armée is on a property called Les Invalides, constructed in the 1670s by Louis XIV (remember Versailles?) as a hospital and assisted living center for military veterans.  Its most visible feature is the Church of the Dome, built with a design based on St. Peter's basilica in Rome.  Much of the old hospital has been reclaimed for a museum dedicated to the history of warfare ranging from the middle ages to WW II.

In the following photo, the church is behind the hospital/museum.


There were two aspects of the museum that caught my attention.  First was the armor.  Can you imagine fighting for your life in the heat and humidity of southern Europe wearing this?  And can you imagine being the artisan who put all that intricate design into it knowing that it was going to be the target of lances and maces?


On the other end of the scale of technology was the Enigma Machine.  In WW II the Germans used this machine for encoding messages for their army and navy.  Note the keyboard layout; it's not quite what you're used to.  For scale, it's the size of a normal mechanical typewriter keyboard, for those of you old enough to remember those.  In the 1930s the Polish equivalent of our National Security Agency managed to break the code, "reverse-engineered" the machine, and made the strategic decision to share this knowledge with their French and British counterparts.  The ability to read many of the German military messages during the war was a significant contributor to the final results.


From there we treated ourselves to something Anita had been looking forward to for months: lunch at Laduree (pronounced Lah-doo-ray) on the Champs-Elysees.  This is an institution with quite a history, dating back to 1862.  I must admit that "tea rooms" are not as thrilling to me as seeing cool things like a WW II crypto machine, but this is a two-person vacation, isn't it?  We finished up with dessert (below), and brought with us a few macarons, for which Laduree is most famous.

Tomorrow is the final stage of the 100th running of the Tour de France.  I'm hoping to snag a few pics.  We've been watching the race progress and the fans who line the course are, well, crazier than I.  Wish me luck.  Anita's watching it on TV.  She's smarter than I am.