Jardin Atlantique and Luxembourg Jardin

Friday, August 6, 2010 Day 37
Why is it that cleaning day rolls around so often? Here in Paris, because we have the windows open so much, there is a good deal more dust than we experienced in LaPlace.

Our relationship with our cell phone is thawing a bit. We have figured out how to upload Word documents to it, and this is how we have been doing our walking tours. Much better than printing them out and fumbling with the pages, especially when we don’t have a printer. At Office Depot the other day, it cost us about 3.20€ to get two pages printed. We still have to struggle with the phone, as it seems to pop around wherever it wants to while we are using it, but little by little the relationship is warming up. I am not sure it will ever be more than lukewarm. Sigh

After a morning spent with pedestrian chores, we went for a walk in the afternoon. We started out to explore Gare Montparnasse, which is our local train station. It is broken into three sections, and we wanted to understand the layout a bit better. Built atop the train lines of the Gare is a garden called Jardin Atlantique, or Atlantic Gardens. All of the trees are confined to large cubes of stone, presumably so that they don’t penetrate the roof of the Gare. In the center of the garden is a sculpture composed of several gigantic metrological instruments for measuring the rain, temperature, wind and atmospheric pressure, and what appears to be a sun clock. We tried it out and learned that it is not adjusted for daylight savings time. It is supposed to be surrounded by jets of water but these were not running, probably for financial reasons. Like much of Europe, Paris has been affected by financial problems and some of the more glamorous and picturesque attractions which have a financial impact on the city have been turned off or scaled back. After leaving the garden, we exited back down into the gare and located the underground tunnel next to the metro which led to the Montparnasse Tower. Here we came up and walked alongside Galleries Lafayette, a modest-sized shopping mall, then on around to Rennes street, where we bought some ice cream. We then went to the Luxembourg Gardens again, where we passed tables of guys (mostly) playing chess and people playing bridge. The flowers were magnificent. We entered the orangerie where there were three art exhibits which we toured in a perfunctory manner. One of my eyes had been leaking off and on, and the other eye added to the discord at this point and dulled my enjoyment of everything. So we set off for home and an evening of blogging, reading and catching up.

The weather has been truly gorgeous here, with days mostly in the 70s, and nights in the 50s. There has been a little rain here and there, but not much and not for long – much nicer than the heat wave our Dallas and New Orleans friends have been suffering. Sorry guys!