Hunting animals at the Louvre

It's been a while since I posted about anything remotely French and if you come here for the French life, I apologize.


To make up for it today I bring you the big one.


The Louvre.

We were there on Saturday with 10 other families from the girls' school for THATLou a Treasure Hunt At The Louvre. Quite possibly the most fun you can have at the Louvre with kids, THATLou treasure hunts have you chasing all over the museum looking for art and artefacts from the vast collection with only a photograph, a brief description and the official Louvre map as your guide. Discovered for us by my friend Laura, the treasure hunts are a relatively new Paris activity run by THATLou founder Daisy de Plume. She and Laura worked together to customize the experience for our vast collection of kids and I believe with 40 participants, this may have been the biggest hunt Daisy has ever planned!


On arrival the parents were assigned teams of kids and handed out the game manual. The rules are simple, find as many items on the list in the manual in two hours, photograph your team in front of each one you find and never get more than three metres away from your team mates. The harder the items are to find, the more points you get. Easy!


Get your Converse on because you will be covering all those miles of corridors at a furious pace.


I had Georgia & Savannah, three of their friends and two other parents in my team. A quick look at the map and we were off, searching for art containing animals which was the theme for the day.

We had our first success within minutes Louis XIV on his horse by Francois Girardon. The girls were thrilled and rushed off enthusiastically to find another treasure.


The European sculpture galleries proved to be a good hunting ground for us and we quickly added more finds to our list. This was my favourite, Cupid playing with a Butterfly by Antoine-Denis Chaudet. Love those cherubic hands although the fingernails could do with a good scrub!

I believe we covered every inch of the never ending Egyptian galleries to find the Apis Bull hiding at the end of a corridor.

And then we ran round them one more time to find King Nectanebo II's falcon. Our eighth and final find, he was worth 40 points so we really wanted him, but as you can see exhaustion had set in by this point! One final nerve wracking sprint ensured we were the first team back to the meeting point with just one minute to spare.

And if that has you feeling exhausted, spare a thought for Keith who did the whole thing carrying Florence in the baby carrier. Despite that handicap, his team still beat us, but this really was one of those times when taking part was just as much fun as winning. Either that or all of our feet ached too much for us to care!

In two hours we saw more than we could have ever hoped to have persuaded the girls to see without the incentive of the treasure hunt and while of course, they didn't spend long looking at anything, they had their eyes peeled the whole time for their treasures and noticed plenty of other things to interest them along the way. Enough that they have asked to go back.


Although Keith took the girls to the Louvre at Christmas, this was my first visit since moving to Paris. I've put it off partly because there is so much to see it's difficult to know where to start. THATLou was a great way to get familiar with the museum. I left feeling like I knew it but with plenty to go back and explore.

What a week!

The weather was so lovely last week that I took a little vacation from my life - the one where I make sure my children are fed and have clean clothes - to really enjoy Paris! I've said it before and I'll say it again, the housework will always be there but a week of gorgeous spring weather with Paris on my doorstep is a luxury not to be passed up.

We started the week with a family outing along the Seine on a Bateau Mouche. 100% tourists but a great way to see all the sites in one afternoon!

Tuesday really was going to be my laundry day but when a friend asked if I wanted to see the Robert Doisneau exhibition in the Hotel de Ville, I just couldn't resist another day out in Paris. Halte Garderie was full so I braved another Paris museum with Florence in tow and we both loved it.

On Friday I was back in Paris again this time to meet up with one of my few but faithful blog followers, the delightful Genie from Paris and Beyond. If you read her blog you will know that she visits Paris often, but this was the first time ever that she had been accompanied by her husband! The sun shone down on them from the beginning to the end of their week long visit and knowing what a treat it was for her to be here was the motivation for me to get out and enjoy it all too. We met in Parc Monceau, somewhere else new to me in Paris, but a favourite spot for Genie.


Florence loved the ducks and chased the pigeons.


Then had the time of her life coming down the fastest slide in Paris.


After a very pleasant hour spent chatting, photographing and discovering much that we have in common, Genie and her husband walked off into the Paris spring and Florence and I set off in the car round the périphérique and back home.

On Saturday the sunshine was gone and real life came back with a jolt. I spent the rest of the weekend teaching, what seemed like every English speaking eleven year old girl outside Paris, to sew!


Nine flapper dresses were whipped up for India's school musical. (More on that later!)


And her girl scout troop all made sit-upons at the meeting we hosted on Sunday. We used this tutorial should you be in urgent need of one yourself!

Finally merci to Véronique for so sweetly mentioning me in her post this week and welcome if you are visiting from 'Seattle'!

Now I really MUST go and do some laundry!

Monets and toddlers

Last week, while my Mum was still visiting, she and I went to see the Musée Marmottan Monet in the 16th Arrondissement. On Monday we had to wait in for a plumber, Tuesday we were getting a furniture delivery so Wednesday was the only day we had free for a bit of Paris culture. Wednesday is also the day Florence's Halte Garderie (nursery school) is closed so we had to take her with us. Encouraged by the observation in Stephen Clarke's new book Paris Revealed that the museum is deserted by Paris standards we set out undeterred and arrived not entirely by design at the start of the French lunchtime and, yes, it was quiet!

The museum is home to the largest collection of Monet's work in the world along with many other works by artists of the Impressionist movement. The painting that started the entire movement Impression, Soleil Levant is the star exhibit, but there was no waiting in line for twenty minutes just to get a glimpse of it. We had the room in which it is hung to ourselves with as much time to gaze at the glowing sun as we wanted. If the week started with the usual tedium of suburban life this was another one of those "I can't believe we're really doing this!" moments. (Rather like the conversation I overheard last night as I drove Savannah & Georgia's friend back home from a playdate. Busily complaining about playground politics, Savannah stopped mid-sentence to say "look, the Eiffel Tower" then without drawing breath carried on her rant about the mean kid.) Only in Paris!

So... should you take your almost two year old to the Musée Marmottan? Surprisingly the museum let us take Florence's pushchair into the galleries (after we had lifted it up the twenty steps at the entrance!) un-surprisingly she didn't want to sit in it for long. Luckily she wasn't tempted to run around or touch things (much), but the large empty spaces did make a satisfying echo and it was hard to keep her quiet. There was one scary moment when she seemed to set off an alarm by getting too close to a painting but we whisked her away quick and no one seemed to notice! There were a few disapproving looks but nobody seemed to mind her being there too much. Now I know that this treasure trove is there, so close to home, I will certainly go again but next time, to preserve my sanity, on a day when Halte Garderie is open.