The romantic notion of Paris in the springtime was floating through my head as we arrived in the city.  Unfortunately, we are in Paris in September.   Cold, wet, dreary September.   And the forecast for the entire week we are visiting is more of the same: rain, wind, and 50 degree temperatures.   I’m a fairly adaptable traveler….and with 88 days on the road, we hadn’t expected all of them to be sunshine and roses, so we had packed expensive rain gear and prepared ourselves for some downtime waiting out storms….just not in Paris.   Honestly, everything I researched and planned for Paris involved wandering adorable French markets to buy a baguette, wine, cheese, etc, and settling into one of the “11 Hidden Picnic Spots” to read and glance up at the Eiffel Tower each day…

Instead, we dumped our luggage into our apartment with the most perfect little balcony and bistro table and watched the rain pour outside.   It was time to create a Plan B fast or our week in Paris would quickly become dinners at the Irish pub below us and cheap bottles of wine on the lumpy Ikea couch day after day…And this is how we ended up at the Musée des Arts Forains!  (It sounds so romantic, doesn’t it?  It wasn’t…unless you get really excited by opera singing wax figures…)

We needed an indoor activity and months ago I had stumbled across an unusual museum that seemed at least worthy of a photo-op, so we booked the tour for Sunday afternoon and didn’t worry too much about what we were about to embark on…which was a 2 hour walking tour of a private collection of 19th century carnival games, rides, and general paraphernalia from a private collector housed in a large warehouse in Paris…conducted entirely in French.  (In hindsight, we should have notified someone of where we were going…)

The tour guide was…strange.  He broke into Italian songs without warning at least 5 times in our 2 hours together…or perhaps there was warning, but again, the entire tour was conducted in French so we had no idea what was going on. [Ed. note: every once in a while he’d call over the Americans and say something in heavily accented English like “this is from 1896, and is XYZ. This is what I will say in French.” And then he would talk for 5-10 minutes in French. I think we missed out on some details.]  We were lead through large rooms dimly lit with mannequins wearing Carnival masks and feather dresses dangling from the rafters.   There were flashing lights and old fashion organs playing as we passed by.  And while we didn’t understand a thing that they said around us, we did understand the basic rules of 1890’s Fairground games and got the chance to play the old fashion skee-ball to race horses!   We didn’t win, but luckily didn’t come in 2nd place either. From a translation offered, the 2nd place finisher had to buy drinks for everyone else!

Playing games seemed harmless enough, but in the next room, they actually expected us to ride the carousel!  Now, in theory, carousels are harmless, slow moving, no loops, or turns or anything requiring a seatbelt even…but when the mechanics were built more than 100 years ago, I was unsure of how safe this might actually be.   Always the adventurer (aka fueled by the half bottle of wine we shared at lunch…), I pulled my husband on deck to stand beside my horse and catch me if the thing suddenly fell apart and enjoyed the ride!

The final room of the tour is the one that gave us both a little WTF moment.   Honestly, we spent a few minutes discussing how or if they even had insurance for this madness.   And in my shock, I failed to take a video of what was happening, so you’ll just have to try to picture this.   It was another carousel…powered by bicycle pedals…that each of the 20-ish adults on the ride were pedaling themselves.  So when the guide rang a bell, we all started pedaling as hard as we could and the ride began to make circles, faster and faster as we all were leaning every so slightly into the right with the motion.   In theory, we could go 60 km per hour.  That’s faster than you’re allowed to drive on the 4 lane major road I drive to work each day.   And as we whirled around and around, my pant leg got caught in the 1890’s pedal and my foot was whipped clear off it’s spot!   Unsure of what to do here, I shrieked (because some sounds transcend the language barrier) and pulled both feet up out of the path of the moving track and held on for dear life until this terrible life plan came to an end!

And as we scurried our way out of the fairgrounds, the guide was so kind to tell us in English that there’s a sister carousel to this one in New York we could go visit one day…maybe next trip?