Arrival in Paris!
We had a pretty un-eventful flight into Paris for our first day. We decided to arrive a day early so that we could go to the Louis Braille museum just outside of Paris.
My husband asked before we went if we could check it out, so we decided to go for it!
​
We hired a private car to take us over to the museum since it's out in the country side, just north of Disneyland Paris.
The very first thing we did after arriving in the town of Coupvray, France, was stop for a snack after our flight. We came to a grocery store and stopped at the in-store boulangerie (a new word for us that our driver taught us) for a snack. Since we had time to kill, we also explored the grocery store and I snapped a photo of the cheese section. I was so impressed with how much cheese there was!
The Braille museum didn't open up for another hour after our arrival, so we had some time to kill and decided to walk to Louis Braille's grave. From the grave stone (and google translate) we learned that Louis Braille was declared a national hero and his body was moved to the Pantheon in Paris in 1952. We also found a monument to him in the town, as he was not just a national hero but a local hero too!
The Museum itself was pretty small, contained inside of the Braille family home where Louis grew up. We learned during our tour that Louis Braille came from a poor family, living in the countryside shortly after the French Revolution in the early 1800s.
​
His dad was a saddle maker, and as such they had a 'nice' house, at least by country peasant standards. There was only one room with heat in the home, where the parents cooked, slept and ate, while the children slept in an unheated room upstairs. It was pretty poor living compared to the Place of Versailles that we saw later on.
​
When Louis was just a very young boy, he wounded himself in his eye with one of his father's saddle making tools. The resulting infection lead to the total loss of sight in both of his eyes.
​
Still, the young Louis kept working on his studies and eventually won a scholarship to "Institution des Jeunes Aveugles", a Royal academy for the blind in Paris. Usually this school was reserved for Nobility, so it was very special that Louis had studied so hard that he was able to attend school here.
The museum had rare books owned by Louis Braille that Jason was actually allowed to read by the museum staff. He reads braille just about daily and is an avid reader.
Of course, the books were in French braille, so as a non-French speaker, he couldn't quite understand it in French.
Some of the books were written in a raised alphabet script that existed before Louis Braille invented Braille. The raised text was naturally much harder to read than Braille is, as the reader has to tell what each letter is by touch alone.
With Braille's system, each letter is translated into a six-dot code, which is much easier to read then simply raising the alphabet we read visually into a tactile form.
After we were done with our trip to the Braille museum, we checked into our hotel and got our dinner. We went to a resturant near the hotel as reccomended by the front desk clerk.
​
I had a warm morracian carrot salad that was incredibly good!
Jason got a beef dish that was also excellent.
Before we went to bed, we read the note left by our tour guide, Rolinka, about the next day.
Luckily for us, I had planned ahead and had printed off photos for our metro pass the day before, so we were well prepared for our first 'real' day on the tour!
