Heritage Days - with Parents!

Last weekend was Heritage Days in Europe (Journées Européennes du Patrimoine), which means many monuments, museums, and important cultural sites were open to the public - either free or with reduced fees. With my parents visiting, we took advantage of the situation, and went to two museums :-)

Our first stop was at the Musée de la Mer (Sea Museum). We had been before (see this post), but this time there was something special! This model was built by Repetto Joseph-Pascal, whose grand-daughter was on hand to explain all about the special exhibit on display. He hand-made all the pieces for each model, including tiny working pulleys and doors that opened. This one took more than 4,000 hours to build!

He had had an amazing career - first as a carpenter in a shipyard, then building models. He invented a machine for pulling ships in to dry-dock, that reduced the time from 4 days to *one* hour! That's certainly something that any engineer, and (I'm guessing) anyone else, would find impressive.
He won an extraordinary 3 "Master Work" awards for his models, several more honors, then was inducted into the Legion of Honor, and the Order of National Merit, and a whole bunch more that I didn't recognize, but are evidently a big big deal here! Here is his grand-daughter, proudly showing photos of his works :-)

We continued our heritage education by lunching on Tielles at La Haut, then checking the views from Mont Saint-Clair.

Then, on to Paul Valéry Museum!

I love this one, every time I see it :-)