It’s sad to say that this must have been the first thing that we’ve done that I’d describe as forgettable.

The Musée Carnavalet is a Museum that chronicles the history of France, which would be very interesting to learn more about if only the museum was better laid out. It felt like they were purposefully hiding all of the interesting parts of their museum. At first, the museum consists of just different rooms that are set up how they would normally be in the time period. It’s interesting…for the first 5 minutes and for the first two rooms. I literally had to go up to the third floor to get to the good stuff, and then afterwards the museum was actually pretty cool. They didn’t have any big name artists (that I could see) but they had a lot of Parisian paraphernalia and it was enjoyable to look at. It’s just like three hours later, I felt like I didn’t even go to the museum.

After the museum, we started walking around the neighborhood and noticed something very interesting; we were in a predominately Jewish neighborhood. It literally was like stepping into Borough Park. It’s incredible when you think about it. Regardless of where you go, you will have different groups of people congregate together. We stumbled into a great falafel place and inside they had a live webcam feed from Israel.

This is one kind of realization that I have made while on this trip. America has been described as a nation of immigrants and I think we have these preconceived notions of what a stereotypical French person (or Italian person or Greek person or Spanish person etc.) looks like and behaves. Yet, when you look at Paris, you see just a diverse a people as you do in New York, from different faiths, races, and walks of life. Immigration is just as prevalent (if not more!) than in the United States. We may have a giant ocean between us, but I’ve found that many things are very similar here. I could write a whole book, let alone a blog post, about globalization and how I see it constantly in France, but I will save that for another day.

Up Next: Musée de l’Orangerie