DAY 18, MAY 23, Monday:

Sèvres – Cité de la céramique (Sèvres City of Ceramics)

is a French national ceramics museum located at the Place de la Manufacture, Sèvres, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb of Paris, France. It was created in January 2010, from the merger of the Musée national de Céramique-Sèvres and the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. The museum is open daily except Tuesday 10-6

LOGISTICS [complicated enough but became worse as the tram did not call at La Defense because of maintenance works and L metro train did not stop at our transfer station ]

We were taking our homebound flight the next day. Son took the PCR test at the airport at 8 am when he pharmacy opened and got the negative result. 35 euros.

Then we had to take the RER B into Paris. Original plan was as follows all on 1 ten euro ticket to be completed in 90 min

RER B PIER 11 STOPS , transfer at

Chatelet Les Halles

RER A zebu 3 STOPS

get down at La Défense train station

TRAM T2: T2 Porte de Versailles (Parc des Expositions 7 Stops

Musee de Sevre 300 m walk

We did the RER bits and needed to get on the T2 Tram ,,, it was not calling at La Defense.

We went to a kiosk and asked the guy how to get to Sevre musee. He told us the tram station there was in maintenance and closed. we could take metro L and meet it up further down in the next station PUTEAUX.

our troubles were not yet over. the metro train did not stop at Puteaux. In fact it was skipping a few stops. We sat on watching our destination on our offline map on phone. [T2 nd L seem to go in the same direction] After a while, the L metro was getting away.... the blue dot was now further from our museum. We went on it for a few stations and got further away from our museum. We got down, took the same line in the opposite direction.

I told son. the tourism Gods have been very kind to us. We've had an amazing time in Spain which was our main goal. Let's just go back to the hotel. May be our quota of holiday fun is up

son refused.

The L metro train went on in the reverse direction, surprisingly this train stopped at our PUTEAUX station. We got down and took the T2 tram as we could /should have earlier

on the lft side of the map below we can see the L metro T2 tram stations/line

we reached Parc des Expositions where we had to get off. .. We thankfully got out, walked to the museum as we had prepped seeing Google street view It was past 12 noon when we reached the museum. [our RER ticket which allowed transfers for 90 min travel must have long lapsed, but we had been too tired to remember .]

MUSEUM CLOSED 1 HOUR FOR LUNCH

Bought tickets 8e and saw some exhibits till 1.

The museum closes 1-2 pm for lunch

we sat on a bench in their garden and they told us we had to get out of the grounds and wait outside. they gave us a restaurant card where we could go, looking at our startled faces.

we were the only visitors and we understood... their mueum, their rules

It was raining. We did have our umbrellas and sat on a bench outside after eating our packed sandwiches.

We reentered at 2 and enjoyed the remaining halls till 6pm.

despite all the niggles we experienced, we were very happy with our day. It's an awesome museum , each piece is exquisite

The museum was inaugurated in 1824 by Alexandre Brongniart, director of the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, becoming the first museum dedicated to fine ceramic arts in the world.

The main floor exhibits ceramics from the East and West, from its origins to the sixteenth century. The first floor of the museum is dedicated to European earthenware and porcelain from the sixteenth century to the present.

below is the pic from their lift

The museum holds more than 50,000 objects, of which about 5,000 were manufactured by Sèvres

SO WHAT'S CERAMIC?

Ceramic is a Word of Greek origin: keramos means “clay”.

The generic term ceramic designates all the objects made of clay which have undergone an irreversible physico-chemical transformation during firing at high temperature between 800 and 900° C. Ceramics is the first "art of fire" to appear, before the work of glass and metal, at the end of prehistory, in the Neolithic period.

NATIVITY

GROSS CHOICES

CHINESE

JAPANESE

At the washroom

These ceramic flowers are sold separately... the stalks are wire. People can assemble and display them as they want. These have been used by the Queen of Louis XV, and Madame Pampadour

PROBLEMS AS OUR RER/METRO TICKET IS NOT RECOGNIZED

We got out of the museum, took the tram to La Defense. We had to take the RER A and then transfer to RER B at Chatlet.

We saw people jumping through the metro stiles. We thought they were law breakers. When our turn came our single ticket was not being recognized. Only passes got beeped and the stile opened. Son jumped over, I crawled under and we got through.

The transfer to RER B did not need going through stiles.

We reached the airport and we had to again punch our ticket to open the stiles to get out.

Same problem. People with passes were passing through and a bunch of us with single tickets were stranded.

the stile wall was quite high, 4 feet, son vaulted over, I refused to try. He tried to press the glass doors open, pressed his body against the crack in the doors, yes they opened and I ran through.

A Spanish group waiting with us thanked us profuely and they also got through.

It was 8 pm, we walked 200 m to our hotel and packed up

DAY 19, MAY 24, Tuesday:

Checked out at 7.30 am and walked to CDGVAL station, took it to Terminal 2 , boarded our separate flights. Son took off at 10.30, mine was delayed 3 hours.

That was the end of our beautiful vacation.

Happy travels Every one, See you soon!

Our videos AT THE END OF THIS post...

https://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2022/07/spain-paris-2022-trip-videos.html