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Published: August 12th 2017
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Paris
Jardin des Plantes We sleep in. We have a late breakfast. We publish a blog or two, hope you are enjoying them. We Skype. We plan what to do with the rest of the day. We’re in Paris and we can’t spend the day in a hotel room surrounded by bags of clothes, breakfast items, small appliances, purchases, and an accumulation of debris to be disposed of. Just hope we can open and shut the studio apartment door.
A decision has been made. We’ll take the RER train into Paris and wander around some gardens. We choose Jardin des Plantes. It is only a short walk to the railway station and already the day is warming up. We decide on single fare tickets today. Hopefully that will get us to our destination and safely back again.
Chatelet is a good station to exit the RER and take a Metro to Jussieu. We get to Chatelet and find all sorts of things happening. The Metro is undergoing a face lift and it is organized chaos. Young people are being employed to help people by shouting directions, in French of course, several shouting at the same time. For us it was impossible to understand,
Paris
Jardin des Plantes we’re sure the locals had the same problem. Others were handing out useful maps. The most annoying aspect was the people engrossed in their cell phones not really looking where they were going until they realized their way was barred by two traveling Kiwis. This necessitated a deviation. Just as well Jane wasn’t in charge. We could hear the instructions somewhere out there, “If possible do a U turn”.
The gardens are a peaceful retreat in this busy vibrant city. On either side of an avenue of plane trees are sample gardens featuring a range of plantings. These gardens are a living museum of plants. The perfume from the roses is powerful. Interesting to see how some plants we think of as creepers, wisteria, have been developed into shrubs. People are taking the opportunity to just relax, to exercise or study some of the plants. Gardeners are busy tidying the beds, signs asking people to keep off the grass. Sometimes we have to daintily walk over the grass to read the label of a plant or shrub. The French gardens like to mix their plantings. There are bean tepees in flower beds, grasses and colourful vegetables growing side by
Paris
Jardin des Plantes side, other beds are made up of herbs, a kitchen garden, a dramatic display of zinnias. It is all there.
Along one side of the gardens is a menagerie. We decide not to visit but we do see a red panda sunning itself high on a bamboo frame. There must be a wide range of animals in this inner city zoo, a child’s delight.
We don’t visit the glass houses or the various museums around the perimeter of these gardens. They feature natural history, archaeology and geology. Set amongst these gardens is a very nice house that is the home to the Cabinet History of Botanical Gardens. We have had a wonderful day just wandering and browsing and getting ideas or identifying plants we have in our own garden. Time to retrace our steps via Metro and RER back to our accommodation.
On arrival at our designated station we emerge through the barrier to be eye balled by heavily armed transport police. Is this the end of our holiday? Have they been studying CCTV coverage of yesterday’s vial act? With valid ticket in hand we pass by unmolested. Just as well we had changed our clothes. After
Paris
Jardin des Plantes a quick supermarket visit we return to our humble abode for the evening and a simple meal around our very small table.
Tomorrow is another day. Maybe a laundry visit before we return to another sightseeing delight.
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Guam bbq
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The Heart of France
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