Paris - Palais Garnier & Perfume Museum

June 16, 2016, Thursday morning 5am, Berlin Tegel Airport. My 4 day long weekend in France begins here.
Two things are happening in parallel: strike season in France, the UEFA which happens to be in France. Both are tempered with demonstrations and street violence. Great time to go, I admit. We were careful not to book Air France, because we knew what would happen... At that moment it seemed that the chance that Air France will be on strike is slightly higher than Air Berlin would go bankrupt. Both could in theory actually happen. Air France went on strike, but thankfully Air Berlin still flew.

The other thing is the timing. That night, June 16 Germany was playing against Poland. Both nations were on the way to Paris, most of them on the same flight together with me. Great. They were trying to sing and scream louder than the other. I took the RER to the city center, where I headed to Gare Saint Lazare, where I made sure that my train runs, and picked up my ticket to Caen.

I had a couple of hours before leaving for Caen, so I decided to explore the extended area of the station. After a totally overpriced breakfast I headed to Palais Garnier, which is the Paris Opera House. The building was build in the 60's and the 70's of the 19th century (under the rule of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who although remained on power after a coup d'état, but invested a lot of money in the reconstruction of the city), was designed by Charles Garnier, French architect, and has almost 2000 seats.

The foyer is impressive:

Main Hall:

But the highlight is Chagall ceiling of the main hall:

Chagall's ceiling is alive. A lot of things are happening there. It makes a very interesting contrast to the classical, frozen, over-decorated building.

I loved it.

Later I walked around the area, and found the Perfume Museum, which was very interesting. I was never too much into this topic, but my interest raised as I read Patrick Süskind's novel. I've learned a lot about the different types of perfumes, and the methods of perfume manufacturing.

You may need all these to create a good perfume:

Storing perfume in bottles in different periods of the history:

The sensation that the fragrance provokes could be represented by an olfactive pyramid. The perfumed notes create a fragrance, depending on their degree of evaporation and their persistence.

Some essences originate in animals.

The museum was surprisingly interesting. In the afternoon - as planned - I took the train to Caen, where Jeruen was waiting for me at the station.