Gardens, Towers, and Crowds

An ex of mine (who shall remain nameless because she was rather unkind) once said, “Being in Paris consists of a lot of ‘seeing of beauty.'” Since this was my first non-work day in the city, it was time to go do some of that!

I stripped all my luggage off the bike, leaving one bag with the camera in it. Everything else could stay locked behind this insane apartment door:

Out in the chaos of people, I made for Seine, the river at the center of the city.

I got a recommendation from friend Cara to try the hot chocolate at Angelina. It looked amazing but there was an equally amazing line, and the wait for a table was 70 minutes. So I hopped across the street to Tuileries Garden, and did some “seeing of beauty” instead.

I wandered the gardens with my “courtyard” playlist adding to the atmosphere — mostly stuff by Harold Budd and Stephan Micus, with the Coil album “The Agelic Conversation” mixed in.

I passed two large fountains ringed with chairs, and every chair was occupied, with crowds milling around them. There were at least three cafes partially under shade, and each had a line about 20 people deep. It was more like being in the middle of a farmers market than being in a park. Perhaps it’s some kind of post-COVID travel boom, but it really feels excessive, like, how do the actual residents of Paris even put up with this?

I also saw people – I couldn’t tell if they were locals or tourists – sitting with their feet deliberately across a second chair just to get a little more comfortable, even though literally hundreds of people, including elderly, were all around them and any one of them would have probably sat down given the chance. I was thinking, “Is this Parisians saying ‘screw you’ to the tourists, or is this tourists saying ‘screw you’ to each other? Maybe both…”

When I reached the other side, it was time to launch myself into the streets again to find that big pokey-uppey thing everyone’s heard about:

Cool! Now if someone dares me to prove that I’ve seen the pokey-uppey thing, I can show them this picture, which looks totally fake and exactly like all the other ones. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Meandering back to the north, I encountered a protest in progress.

Several people were carrying anti-COVID-vaccine signs, but they were mixed with others I couldn’t parse. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what the protest was about. But it was very French.

After that, I found some more buildings to stand in front of:

Then I dodged into another groovy garden (Jardin du Luxembourg) full of stoic statues, plus one out-of-place dude on a laptop.

Some time after that I saw this poster on a wall, and was intrigued. With a little help from my phone I realized it was a concert happening the very next day, and I could still buy a ticket for it.

Back in 1992 I was gifted a CD with Mozart’s Requiem, and I played the heck out of it. It fed into my lifelong obsession with music. It’s one of the most popular pieces of “classical” music in the world, and for good reason.

I paused my random bicycling to eat another decadent snack, and try to buy a ticket with my phone. The interface was just a little bit broken. Perhaps that’s why there were still tickets!

I decided to try again with my laptop in the evening. But first: Jardin des Plantes for a brief moment, a little pause by La Fontaine Cuvier, and then a northward course past Notre-Dame Cathedral (sadly under repair).

One of the things I wanted to see was the Labyrinthe du Jardin des Plantes. Not much of a puzzle, but a refreshing walk:

I was starting to run out of daylight, but there was one more garden I could visit on my way to the apartment: Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris, commissioned by Henri IV in 1612.

When you’re pressed for time because there are so many things to see, and one of those places is a gorgeous park that’s been sitting around being gorgeous for 400 years, and one of the best ways to enjoy a park is to stretch out and read a book for the whole afternoon, but it’s already evening, what can you do?

All I could do was stroll around and take a few photos, and imagine that I’d been lounging on the grass all day.

Note to self: Check out this place, some time when I can fit more baked goods into my stomach:

Back in the apartment, I managed to buy a ticket for the concert. Tomorrow would be another fine day.