A mile and a half from our apartment is the Botanical Garden of France, Jardin des Plantes, founded in 1626 as a medicinal herb garden known as the "Jardin du Roi." With yet another beautiful sunny day, we walked toward the Jardin, first strolling through our own neighborhood and then along Rue de Ecoles past the university schools of the Latin Quarter (5th arrondissement), enjoying windows, views of pastries, monuments and flowers along the way.
The Rue de Buci in our neighborhood is not as filled with people as it was over the weekend...
There are even some spaces available at the local cafes...
room pour deux here...
The lovely tile entry to Le Petit Zinc...
The children are back in their classes, using their razor scooters as transportation on the sidewalks to and from school. They lock their scooters with bike locks threaded through the handlebar! Nifty!
We ambled through an old "passage" associated with meetings of the revolutionaries during that period of great turmoil, the Cour de Commerce St. Andre. Established in 1776, the name derives from a group of shops along the city walls of Phillipe-Auguste. Marat printed his revolutionary "L'Ami du Peuple" at #8, and Danton lived at #1. Jack has been reading, Around and About in Paris, 1st - 7th, by Thirza Vallois on his Kindle, particularly enjoying the section on the history of the 6th Arrondissement.
Today the Passage has little shops and tea rooms facing the uneven cobblestone pavement.
These sweets might surely calm any residual revolutionary fervor...
An olive oil store with all things olive... We added little olive wood servers for the deck whenever summer comes to Montana. Of course, we needed these!
The back of the Cafe Procope faces onto the passage with pictures of notable revolutionaries who gathered here from near and far.
Here's Ben Franklin who was known to frequent the Procope. He loved his time in Paris, as did Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
In front of the old church, St. Germain des Pres, right across the street from the famed literary cafe "Deux Maggots" we saw a juggler tossing his pins high in the air...
His movements were almost like a ballet as he caught the pins, keeping an eye on the others still in midair.
hands empty...
He catches them and begins the toss again.
On down St. Germain we cross over to Rue de Ecoles, the street of the schools. David McCullough in his book, The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris, describes the young Americans who came to Paris in the 1830's and returned home to establish schools, among them Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr. who studied medicine in Paris. This is the facade of the Descartes School of Medicine.
One of the old favorite student patisseries--still a favorite!
Tiny little shops with delightful windows also line the street.
On along the Rue de Ecoles are schools, statues, students with heavy backpacks, professorial types in tweed sport coats, pondering weighty matters, bookstores, and camping and hiking stores. Yep, student districts are the same everywhere!
We crossed a little side street that opened up a nice view south to the Pantheon...
and north to the Ile de Cite and Notre Dame with its spire...
...and towers peeking over the roof tops. We could just barely make out the row of tourists on the top of the tower who were looking back at us!
At a bookstore we spotted this delightful portrait of the Aesop tale of the Fox and the Crow. The crow has a bit of cheese in his mouth and the fox is trying to flatter the crow into releasing the morsel! Full of winsome praise for the beautiful voice and song of the crow, the fox finally persuades the crow to open its mouth and "sing" to demonstrate the insights of the wily fox, and the cheese drops! Beware of flattery, Aesop warns....
I just love the body language of the Fox...
Right before the entrance to the Jardin we pass a school yard with this marvelous crab apple in full bloom. School is over for the day, but the playground is full of mothers and nannies sitting on the benches watching the children enjoy the weather and the slides and swings.
The strolling of these two "flaneurs" is rather slow, so the next post will take up the Jardin and its delights...
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