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Planning ahead is SO important! I plan to try it some day.
Last year we spent two weeks in Spain. The Madrid hotel where I booked our first-few-nights' lodging turned out to be a hotel by the same name in a different city, and no rooms were available in the correct hotel, so we paid twice for those nights' lodging. We reserved a hotel room in Granada for two nights, and only later discovered that entry to the Alhambra, Granada's principal attraction, wasn't available those days. But it was available a few days later, so (by forfeiting a non-refundable night at another hotel and paying for another night at this one) we managed to come back to Granada, tour the Alhambra, and go on with the rest of the plan. And for our second-to-last night in Spain, we planned to see the fabric-and-textiles museum in Burgos, for which reservations were wide-open 36 hours before, and completely unavailable by the time we got to Burgos. But we still got to a lot of awesome stuff, and promised ourselves we would come back for another two weeks to see things in the other half of Spain.
That was then.
A few months ago, we read that the early-15th-century Tres Riches Heures was being unbound for maintenance and rebinding, and it would be on display (side-by-side with several other famous illustrated books by the Limbourg Brothers, which haven't all been in the same room in 500 years or so) at the Chateau de Chantilly, through October 5. We also heard that the Leuven Chansonnier (15th-century songbook, discovered only about ten years ago) would be on display in Leuven starting October 10. This sounded like a good combination, so we made plans to visit France and Belgium from October 1-14, enough time to get to both special exhibits and see a bunch of other cool stuff in between. So we're in Paris now.
Turns out the Tres Riches Heures exhibition was extremely popular, so in addition to the timed-entry tickets during the day (which were basically all sold out) they added evening hours on four days near the end of the exhibition. And they sold out too. And we are not among the people to whom they were sold. We can still go to Chantilly and see the rest of the palace, the rest of the museum, the rest of the town, everything except the main exhibition around which we scheduled the trip.
If I were a rational, intelligent person I would have reserved a visit to the Limbourg Brothers exhibition first, before even buying plane tickets (since its availability might determine when to schedule those tickets, and it would be an order of magnitude cheaper than plane tickets).
On the brighter side, the exhibition in Leuven does not have separate entry to the exhibition in question -- if you get into the museum, you get into all its exhibitions -- and we've successfully reserved a time slot on Oct. 11, so in case something goes wrong we have two more days to try to get to it.
And we will still get to a lot of other awesome stuff, I presume.
Although today doesn't bode well. We planned to visit three museums. The Hôtel de Sens, which we visited first because it opens at 8 AM according to the Web site, turns out to actually open at 11:00 (the gardens open at 8:00).
The Musée de Cluny, when we arrived, had a staff member putting a sign out front saying "We will open later than usual today because of a social protest." (And what do the French have to protest? Their President mostly obeys the law, acts like an adult most of the time, and hasn't dismantled half of the government in eight months.) She told us she didn't know exactly what time they'd be opening, but she guessed 11:00, so we walked around the neighborhood until 11:00. It wasn't open then either, so we got lunch in the neighborhood, came back around 1:00, and it still wasn't open.
So we walked across the Île de la Cité, where Notre Dame is still being repaired from the fire a few years ago.
Then went on to the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, which (remarkably) was open, although we were pretty tired and frustrated by the time we got there. Anyway, we saw the medieval rooms, got some pictures (including a bunch of molds for presumably-pewter badges)
collapsed on a bench for a while, went to get ice cream, and returned to our rented studio-apartment to crash.
That was then.
A few months ago, we read that the early-15th-century Tres Riches Heures was being unbound for maintenance and rebinding, and it would be on display (side-by-side with several other famous illustrated books by the Limbourg Brothers, which haven't all been in the same room in 500 years or so) at the Chateau de Chantilly, through October 5. We also heard that the Leuven Chansonnier (15th-century songbook, discovered only about ten years ago) would be on display in Leuven starting October 10. This sounded like a good combination, so we made plans to visit France and Belgium from October 1-14, enough time to get to both special exhibits and see a bunch of other cool stuff in between. So we're in Paris now.
Turns out the Tres Riches Heures exhibition was extremely popular, so in addition to the timed-entry tickets during the day (which were basically all sold out) they added evening hours on four days near the end of the exhibition. And they sold out too. And we are not among the people to whom they were sold. We can still go to Chantilly and see the rest of the palace, the rest of the museum, the rest of the town, everything except the main exhibition around which we scheduled the trip.
If I were a rational, intelligent person I would have reserved a visit to the Limbourg Brothers exhibition first, before even buying plane tickets (since its availability might determine when to schedule those tickets, and it would be an order of magnitude cheaper than plane tickets).
On the brighter side, the exhibition in Leuven does not have separate entry to the exhibition in question -- if you get into the museum, you get into all its exhibitions -- and we've successfully reserved a time slot on Oct. 11, so in case something goes wrong we have two more days to try to get to it.
And we will still get to a lot of other awesome stuff, I presume.
Although today doesn't bode well. We planned to visit three museums. The Hôtel de Sens, which we visited first because it opens at 8 AM according to the Web site, turns out to actually open at 11:00 (the gardens open at 8:00).
The Musée de Cluny, when we arrived, had a staff member putting a sign out front saying "We will open later than usual today because of a social protest." (And what do the French have to protest? Their President mostly obeys the law, acts like an adult most of the time, and hasn't dismantled half of the government in eight months.) She told us she didn't know exactly what time they'd be opening, but she guessed 11:00, so we walked around the neighborhood until 11:00. It wasn't open then either, so we got lunch in the neighborhood, came back around 1:00, and it still wasn't open.
So we walked across the Île de la Cité, where Notre Dame is still being repaired from the fire a few years ago.
Then went on to the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, which (remarkably) was open, although we were pretty tired and frustrated by the time we got there. Anyway, we saw the medieval rooms, got some pictures (including a bunch of molds for presumably-pewter badges)
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collapsed on a bench for a while, went to get ice cream, and returned to our rented studio-apartment to crash.