Dans le jardin de ta pensée

Mes lapins, it is back to school with me. Having some structure again spurs me, in general, to get more done. So here I am, presenting some findings.

Several of you suggested the Jardin du Luxembourg. This is for all of you, but surtout for Katie, who suggested it first.

To live an experience in order to recount it later is to don a pair of mental bifocals. On one hand, you focus on your own sensations, your own present experience, your own habits, in interpreting the world around you. On the other, you understand that you see that others may see.

Remember we are flânant, not speed-walking. So be prepared to take your time.

Follow me.

After submitting some job applications in the morning (applying for jobs in two languages is hard work!), I set off around three. 

Since you haven't seen my neighborhood, let me show you around.

The front doors of my apartment building.

I live just on the bend of a U-shaped trio of narrow streets, nicely isolated from the street noise.

One flank of my tranquille little block.

 Following my iPhone's instructions to take Rue Vaurigard, I walked to my nearest Métro station, Convention.

I love having a movie multiplex a five-minute walk away.

 Although I get this far every day - I take this line to school - I had only once before turned left on Rue Vaurigard. I turn right all the time to go to the Monoprix or Picard or Emily's house (let me pause to put in a plug for her amazing food/Paris/life blog), but because the Métro runs right under the street, I don't take the time to be a surface dweller.

But it's charming, and very 15e. 

Mes pamplemousses, I thought of you as I walked (several of you in particular). What, I wondered, would seem remarkable to you, in this neighborhood that has become so ordinary to me?

The A-frame chalkboard menus posted outside cafés and restaurants?

The unusual bookshops?

Sometimes, as I look through these windows, I wonder how old things like that telescope are.

 Would it be the little chocolateries that captured your hearts?

Lots of them dressed up for the holidays.

 This chain of wine shops, as common as Starbucks in San Francisco, where the staff is always ready and willing to recommend a wine for anything from a dinner party offering to a cheap apéro for home?

Perhaps the traiteurs - vendors of prepared food, often Asian or Mediterranean - with their tempting window displays just begging to be scooped into containers and carted home?

This one advertises specialties from Alsace.

 Twenty leisurely minutes or so later, I was in the increasingly more fashionable and swanky 6e. A savvy resident can tell you when you've changed arrondissements before even looking at the posted number on a corner street plaque.

Take a look at the buildings.

The cutesy storefronts.

The walking direction signs.

Those of you who know Paris can tell by the directions and estimated trip length roughly where I am.

And of course, a sprinkling of iconic Paris stores.

I apologize for the lighting, but I simply had to show you this woman, in particular, checking out this window display.

 My iPhone Maps app had finally delivered me to the Rue du Cherche-Midi, home of Poilâne, the bakery Katie found in her research.

Pretty, hmm?

 It's neatly arranged, but a tight little space, and packed with locals and tourists alike. 

They have merchandise, including throw pillows shaped like the bread. But it was too busy and crowded to pause and take many pictures.

The little shortbread cookies, you may be able to read, are called punitions, or punishments. They had free samples in a bowl at the register, and I can tell you there's nothing punishing about them.

 Another hop, and I was at the western gates of the Luxembourg Gardens, a sprawling and legendary park with origins reaching back to the XVIIe century.

Come in, won't you?

I suppose those of you who suggested the garden picture it in your head as green. I do too, in a Platonic sense, as it was still full and verdant when I arrived in September and settled down on a bench there now and then with a book or a sandwich.

But it has a certain stark beauty, clean of its leaves.

It's impressive, the variety of things to do in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Really, there's something for everyone.

Pour les enfants: a large and well-equipped playground.

Take a look at that rope climbing structure on the left. Remind you of something?

A merry-go-round (voilà, Monique!) for which the young riders are provided with sticks. To what end, I'm not sure. Jousting swords? Riding crops? Ideas? At any rate, like many of the activities of the Luxembourg Gardens, it seems like a tradition for many generations of children.

 

And of course, the famous marionette theater, where one can see classic Punch and Judy style shows. They've been performing for a century. I do have envie to go one day, but unfortunately, as it was vendredi, I was out of luck.

Children aren't the only ones who can play in the Jardin du Luxembourg. For the adults, there are sports: a tennis court and a basketball court. 

Plutôt a game than a sport is my favorite to watch: pétanque.

It's a game similar to bocce, which my family used to play on the grass in our park when my brother and I were kids. They launch heavy metal balls, with careful strategy and technique, and try to get their ball the closest to a smaller ball that marks the goal. Sometimes this strategy involves sabotaging other players by knocking the ball away. It's interesting and relaxing to watch. 

The men who play it are almost all well into middle age, some much older. Emily tells me that the teams are consistent, set in stone (substitutions only when absolutely necessary), and most have been playing for years.

But the most popular activity is, well, just sitting around.

There are folks of all kinds: families, teenagers and twenty-somethings in packs, singles and couples of all ages.

I couldn't sum it up any better than this.

I settled down on a chair for a bit myself and nibbled some of my bread from Poilâne. Delicious.

The sun is setting, however, so we must move on.

La Fontaine Médicis is located on the east side of the garden, just inside the gates closest to my school, across from the Panthéon. The fountain, sectioned off by a balcony, is a series of steps below the ground level of the garden. White sculptures of various nobles and royalty - among whom many are Medicis, of course - stand beneath the trees, between the benches and chairs that face the fountain.

You will no doubt remember from your European history (especially the former students of one Sister Joanie) that the Medicis were a Florentine merchant family whose wealth, over generations, turned them into one of the most powerful and influential families in Europe, maneuvering in popes and intermarrying with royal families such as the Habsburgs (Marie Antoinette, sister of Emperor Joseph II) and the Bourbons. Marie de Medici was married to Henry IV, father of the Edict of Nantes, and served as regent during the minority of her son, Louis XIII. Missing the Palazzo Pitti that her family owned in Florence, she commissioned in 1611 a palace with a fountain.

Now, of course, it's a more plebeian scene.

No shortage of visitors on an unseasonably gorgeous Friday afternoon.

The founder of the park, Marie de Medicis. 

At one end of the fountain sits the former palace, now the Sénat building, which opens to the public only during les jours du Patrimoine (faithful readers will remember that I spent eight hours of one of those precious days alongside Amy and Sophia, growing pink and exhausted in the Jardin du Champs-Elysées, awaiting the opportunity to visit the presidential palace).

The light is rather flattering. Apparently these young men agree.

 Ordinarily, one descends à côté des fleurs, but the flowerbeds are meager at the moment. 

We can be patient until spring, can't we? They do teem with promise.

 The fountain itself proves similarly fallow. In the absence of water, children play in its bed.

Watch out, les canards...

 Behold: the Panthéon beyond the gates.

As the sun began to set and the park's closing hour approached, I headed the other way: east and out the gates.

As usual, the vendors of marrons chauds wait outside the gates for hungry visitors.

 As with my one-sided connaissance of Rue de Vaurigard, I rarely walk south on Rue de Saint-Michel. Turns out that the southern part of the street is very tranquille and pretty: more like its cousin, the 6e, than its northern blocks, packed with multicolored t-shirts and multilingual menus.

I couldn't resist.

At the terminus of Saint-Michel, there's a long thin park, the Jardin Marco Polo, extending from the Jardin du Luxembourg as the Panhandle extends from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Sunset provides a lovely contrast.

 Looping back toward the southwestern part of the 6e, I ran across Saint-Sulpice. 

Its fountain beckoned me closer.

Who can resist a good fountain?

 I still had some time to kill before I was due to meet Amy at 20h, so I picked my way along the quiet backstreets to Saint-Germain-de-Près, my old quartier.

Who can resist a lovely bit of iconic street art?

 On Boulevard Saint-Germain, I visited a couple of chocolateries. I'm (lazily) trying to lose weight, but all of the sumptuous displays for Saint Valentin wore down my willpower.

I mean, who can resist a chocolate piano filled with macarons? Madness, sheer madness!

 When it comes to candy, one of my very guiltiest pleasures is self-service bins.

Who can help going overboard with those big ol' scoops?

 As a tonier contrast, I stopped at one of the places in a New York Times article sent to me by my dear Elizabeth: Un Dimanche à Paris.

Decidedly classier.

I bought myself a palm-sized box of chocolate. Six chocolates, six euros. I regret nothing.

Cuter street too. Right next to Le Procope, the oldest café in Paris.

 Well, mes choux, the sun has set. I'd love to stay with you a little longer, but I have friends to meet for some bubble tea in the 5e. So I'll leave you just behind L'Ecole de Medicine, at a shop where you might feel a little more at home.

Thank you for your eyes. Being a long-distance tour guide makes me a very happy and adventurous resident.

If you liked this tour, I can take you along to Brochant Market, Batignolles Square, Rue Montorgueil and the Bois de Bologne as well. But next - Rouen.

A la prochaine.