Our 3rd or 4th Bus Trip, Ever 12-11-15

We took advantage of our Louvre membership to take a trip out to the only satellite Louvre museum in France, in Lens.  It's about a 3hr trip by bus from Paris all on divided highway, once you get out to the Peripherique.  Lens is a former coal mining town which really hit hard times when the mines were closed in the 70's so the museum is a big deal.
We were musing on the number of bus trips we've taken, where the bus is a non-public form of mass transport and we came up with less than 5 since we've been married. Whether that's good or bad depends on you point of view but we've never been overly attracted to that type of travel.  The day was cold and cloudy throughout with short periods of rain so a bus was a luxury this time.
Be that as it may, we met the bus at 8:30 this morning next to the Louvre and had probably between 35 and 45 people, not all seats were filled but every row had at least 2 of the 4 seats filled.  Pretty much people like us, either retired or a day off and, members of the Louvre along with 2 docents who were our group leaders.  They didn't do much more than shepard us on and off the bus and give us the necessary ground rules for the museum visit.   It was funny because we stopped at one point along the way at a rest stop and all went in for a toilet break and snacks.  When we reloaded they went through a three peat on head count and finally resorted to a roll call to make sure nobody was left behind.  I think we must have had a bad count to begin with, but hey they're museum docents not grade school teachers.  I can only image the uproar if someone was left behind.
So we arrived just before noon and decided that we would get a bit of lunch before seeing any of the exhibitions.  There are two choices and we took the cafeteria over the sit-down restaurant in the interest of time.  We were instructed to meet at the cloakroom for a 3:30 retrieval of coats and a 3:45 departure back to Paris.
Luckily the museum is not vast like the Louvre but it has a very nice sort of  "survey" of  objects that are not deemed essential to the Louvre's Paris operations but are nonetheless noteworthy.  So you can see artwork from about 5000 BCE up to the time of Napoleon in basically one large room.  I really like the setup because a gaze across the room allows you to anticipate a bit of what you're going to see, and also preps you for the entire process.   Sculptures are either in glass cases (for the smalls) or free standing with lots of space around them to view from all angles.  The paintings are on free standing walls with presentations on both sides and sometimes the ends.  The room is quite large but not overwhelming and can be easily seen in a hour or so, if you don't listen to all of the audioguide presentations.  The audioguides are very well done and worth the price if you want to get more in-depth discussion on a specific piece.
There were two separate temporary exhibits currently displayed as well.  The first was a depiction of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" through the eyes of artists beginning in the Renaissance and up through Picasso.  With about 30 paintings and sculptures it was quite intimate and fun.
The second was more ambitious and dealt with the "Fete Gallants" which were championed by Madame de Pompadour, and featured primarily the works of Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard, with other pieces displayed by other artists as well.  One of the fun features of this exhibit was the display of theatrical costumes from the period.  Evidently costumes of this age are very rare and the curators had to prevail upon the museum in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic to get a representative sampling, so it was fun to see things from the town which we visited in October.
After getting my coat I went outside to take pictures of the mine dumps that dominate the skyline just south of the town, they look like pyramids in the mist.
After the visit we loaded on to the bus and had quite a rapid trip back to Paris arriving about 45 minutes earlier than forecast.  I guess the traffic, which seemed heavy to me, was not as bad as they had thought.  So we made it back to the apartment earlier as well.