Today we start late – around noon – with no agenda and little direction. Have I mentioned I find the number 13 lucky? Well, today the first café we find to have breakfast happens to be right across the street from the Jardin du Luxembourg. How cool. We eat scrumptious salad, finally with tender salad greens, and fluffy quiche Lorraine that melts in our mouths. The frozen kind just isn’t going to cut it when we get home!
The Jardin is lovely; again with sacred grass you are not supposed to walk on, but just admire. The gate we enter by is near an apple orchard where the apple trees are all espaliered on wrought iron fences, and each apple that has appeared has been wrapped in a white bag. One or two have been left on the ground as offerings to the insects, but I wonder what becomes of the others? Special cider? Research? A special fruit stall that only those in the know can shop?
Further along the path is a huge apiary, another mystery, what happens to the honey from this source? Then there are all sorts of areas devoted to the pleasures of children, including climbing structures, spinners and a gravity-based ride that we have never seen before where children stand or sit on a circular padded disc that hangs from a track, and follows a circuitous course until it brings them to where they can step off easily to the ground. Fun. Lovely. But sadly the carousel and the puppet show are not open right now.
For the adults there are bocce areas, tennis, volleyball, basketball and other courts. All of these are in the open, surrounded by lovely tree-filled places to picnic. Further along we run into an organ grinder playing on a stage where I imagine band concerts happen often.
Soon we are in front of another grand building, the Palais du Luxembourg and more precisely the Medici fountain, which is glorious in that it is meant for people to relax and enjoy themselves. Little wooden boats sail the pond holding the fountain with their young captains chasing them from side to side with sticks to adjust their sails. Lovely. All of this is surrounded by gardens with the most beautiful flower plantings and sculptures suitable for the Louvre.
We are thrilled to have discovered this place, just meters from our apartment, and now consult the map to pick the right streets to the Latin Quarter and the Sorbonne. Here in St. Germain des Pres the streets seem to intersect even more like footpaths, five or six to an intersection and they are mostly narrow, with a single file sidewalk, if any: Old parts of the city, clearly.
We proceed, expecting to enter the Sorbonne area, and we do, and at the same time run into the Pantheon that we wanted to see, but didn’t know was in this area. What a treat. There are no lines and we enter the amazing building that is a tribute to all heroes of France, and most especially those who have given their lives in her honour. It is huge and awesome and everything a sacred, patriotic place should be. There is a statue in one alcove to the artists who have been lost over time…I like that! In the middle of the great hall is Foucault’s pendulum that he used to prove that the earth rotates around the sun. Don’t ask me to explain it, but it is marvelous to see hanging from a 230 feet high dome and tracing the time with its arc.
We leave the Pantheon and walk the streets with the colleges of the Sorbonne around us. Soon we are near the Seine and the Ile de la Cite and decide to cross behind Notre Dame to the right bank…and what do we run smack into but Paris Plage. This is just too cool. The city brings in sand and palm trees and tables with beach umbrellas and beach chaises and water misters and foosball tables and a place to dance and cafes and places them all along a closed road on the banks of the Seine. It is wonderful and everyone there is having a great time, especially the children. It is great to see the tres chic enjoying a taste of what it would be like if they were at the ocean. Sadly, there is nowhere to swim, but gladly that doesn’t seem to matter.
As we consider our options, it occurs to us that it is Wednesday and the Musee du Louvre is open on Wednesday nights. Well, not last Wednesday, but most Wednesdays so we go up to see, since we are right there. It is open! Yay! Time to eat before we go, and we decide that McDonalds in the Carousel du Louvre food court will get our business. So cool, they have large shared tables to eat at and also leather low slung lounge chairs that overlook what used to be the moat of the Louvre. Cool! I have a Happy meal and get cool 3D sunglasses and a flying dragon to give to Malcolm!
We find a ticket machine off the food court that spits out tickets in no time and we beat the crowd. We decide to do the Denon wing tonight because, well, it is just so massive and we both want to see Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa – we know, so touristy, but really you have to! So we see these uber famous ladies and then marvel at the sculptures and paintings and architecture that populates the neighbourhood they inhabit. There are too many works and not enough superlatives to describe this wonder! After a few hours we are bagged: over stimulated and happy. Full of art and McDonalds and Paris and the great day we have lucked into.
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