As with the previous day, when we went to The Paris Catacombs, we were in need for another rainy day activity. Fortunately, we weren’t short of those rainy day activities, with our youngest already very keen on visiting Paris’ science and industry museum, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie.

Located at The Porte de la Villette on the site of the old cattle market and abattoirs, the museum is built on top of a reinforced concrete structure, which is remains of an unfinished project to build a large sales room, as part of the old cattle market.

Opening in 1986, the museum forms part of Parc de la Villette, which is a large park complex that replaced the old cattle market and abattoirs. In addition to the green spaces and science and industry museum, there’s many other cultural venues, including an IMAX cinema and concert hall.

Going to Les Halles for lunch

Before going to the museum, we planned to head to near Les Halles, to grab some lunch. We’d seen about MELT, a small chain of restaurants in the city, specialising in Texas style smoked barbecued meat. It sounded interesting and a bit different for Paris, so we thought we’d give it a go.

One of MELT’s restaurants is MELT DELI, located in the Les Halles neighbourhood. Originally, this was the location of Paris’ wholesale market for fresh food products, from the middle ages until the 1960s, where it moved to the outskirts of the city.

Redevelopment of the market area began in the 1970s, which included the construction of the Forum des Halles shopping centre and Châtelet-Les-Halles train station. It was then subsequently updated in 2016 with another redevelopment, which included the installation of La Canopée, a large roof above the forum and train station.

Riding from our Airbnb apartment on a Vélib bike, I made my way to Forum des Halles, to meet up with the others. I must say, despite the recent redevelopment, Forum des Halles feels quite dated. La Canopée roof also makes it feel quite gloomy too. I suspect it would have been better with no roof over it.

We made our way over to MELT DELI Les Halles. It must have been a little early and we were the first people in there, though people started to arrive later. Our lunch at MELT was very tasty, somewhere I’d definitely go back to.

At Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie

Having had an enjoyable lunch at MELT, we made to La Villette on the Métro, to where Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie is located. Leaving the station, we walked over to the museum, across the green space.

I must admit, on a rainy day like that day, our first impressions of La Villette weren’t massively high. I suspect it looks much more inviting on a nice sunny day.

Entering the museum, our initial impressions were much better. The scale of the vast main hall was very impressive, with the various aircrafts hanging from the roof. It’s a big museum, with a lot to see and do.

We made our way around the museum, starting in the Precious Waste exhibition, carrying onto the The Great Story Of The Universe exhibition and taking in the show at the Planetarium. We had hoped to go round the Argonaute Submarine, but they’d closed it by the time we go there.

We really enjoyed our visit to Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, there’s so much to see and do there, more than we had time or energy for. The only negative was some parts were in French only, such as the show at the Planetarium. Though equally, our French should be better and we shouldn’t always expect everything to cater for English speakers.

Having read more about Parc de la Villette and the other venues that form part of the complex, it would have been great to explore further, particularly in a day with a bit nicer weather.

Returning home

After our time at the museum, we made our way to the tram stop at Porte de la Villette, to catch the T3b tram to Porte de Clichy, near to our Airbnb apartment.

The T3b tramway, with the T3a tramway form the Tramway des Maréchaux, named after the Boulevards des Maréchaux, where they run. The Boulevard itself follows the line of Enceinte de Thiers (Thiers Wall), the old defensive wall around Paris.

Initially opening in 2009, then extended in 2012, the T3a and T3b tramways form almost a full circle around Paris. Running in the middle of the boulevard, between the traffic lanes, they’re more like light rail, than traditional tram, with the benefits of not having to mix with traffic.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at Porte de Clichy, where we left the tram and made our way to our Airbnb apartment.