Day Thirteen -- November 9, 2012

We had been playing around with the idea of taking the train from the airport to Brussels, Belgium for the day, but Mike's cough was still pretty bad so we thought it would be better to sleep in and just go into Paris for a few hours.  It was cloudy and chilly out but was not supposed to rain, so after a quick breakfast in the eighth floor Executive Lounge we walked over to the RER train station right behind the Hilton and caught the next train into Paris.  We got off the train at the Saint Michel/Notre-Dame station and made our way through the underground tunnels to Place Saint Michel for lunch.  We love the salad Nicoise at the Saint Severin restaurant at 3 Place Saint Michel so we walked there for a nice lunch of salads and wine in their non-smoking enclosed patio.

We then walked down Boulevard Saint Michel to the Cluny Museum which is the National Museum of the Middle Ages.  The museum is located on the site of a Roman bathhouse, which was in the center of town during the Roman years.  Several of the rooms have the original 40-foot-high Roman vaulted ceilings and the sheer size -- constructed in 200 A.D. when Rome as at its peak -- gives an idea of the epic scale on which the Romans built.

The museum has medieval altarpieces, weaponry, crowns, a beautiful chapel with an elaborate stone ceiling and lots of statues, but the highlight is the Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries.  These six mysterious tapestries were designed by an unknown artist before 1500 AD and are loaded with symbols -- some serious, some playful -- and deal with each of the five senses:  Taste, Hearing, Sight, Smell and Touch.  The series ends with the most famous of the series, A Mon Seul Desir (To My Sole Desire).  The room where the tapestries were hung was very beautiful and had a bench in front of each tapestry so you could really take in all the details.

We walked around the Left Bank a little more before heading back to the RER station and heading back to the hotel to repack and rest up for our long trip home tomorrow.  We were able to print out our boarding passes at the computer in the Executive Lounge while we enjoyed a drink and some snacks.  We didn't feel like a big dinner so just went down to the bar again for a  chicken Caesar salad and some wine.