Saturday 6 October 2007

Jardin du Luxembourg

I went for a walk around the Jardin du Luxembourg, its one of the most popular parks in Paris and it really is quite pretty. It really is a jogger's heaven too, there were hundreds of them. You feel a bit sorry for runners in these big cities, because they are forced to just do laps around these small little parks rather than run in the street. At least the parks are pretty, but you probably don't really notice after you've already run around it 10 times that morning. Apparently there is some massive number of bees here, I think maybe there are hives somewhere, so I left it until later in the season before visiting. I'm pretty allergic to bees and don't yet have my social security card so I could end up with no medical help, better to just avoid the danger. It is a pretty park, and if it is a nice day I recommend a visit.

The picture to the left is some statue, there were quite a few in this park, and the Pantheon in the background. You can see here how big the Pantheon is and it really does dominate this section of Paris. You can see on the trees that the leaves are already starting to change colour and fall.

Paris is much further north than Canberra is south, so you notice the change of the seasons much more here. The sun is accelerating away from us at the moment and so the days are getting shorter by between 3-4 minutes everyday. The sun is now rising at about 8am and setting by before 7:30pm. When I first arrived it would rise at about 6am and not set until about 10pm.


Another building which dominates this section of town is the Tour Montparnasse, here it is again, along with the Grand Bassin. You can hire little sailing boats here, this park is very much a park for the children. As well as the boats there is also a Punch and Judy theatre and a massive playground which has been separated for the big kids and the little kids. The other picture is the Palais du Luxembourg which was built in the 1620's for a consort of King Henri IV who was missing the Pitti Palace in Florence where she grew up. The French Senate now works here, nice parliament house, they have been here isnce 1958.

There is also an exhibition hall, the Musee du Luxembourg, in a converted Orangerie of the palace. There can be quite pretigous (read expensive) exhibits on here, but when I went there was a free exhibit where all the art was made of food or plant material, very high-brow :). It was pretty cool, I think the French really get into the harvest festival mood of autumn, they seem to still be quite a rural people, or at least they give that impression.

They had little demonstrations and free fruit for people which was pretty nice, a pear and some art, a good day all round. This was a guy who was demonstrating how to carve stuff out of vegetables and the next shot is the things he had already made. It was a bit of a waste of food, turning it into entertainment for people, but it looked pretty good.


















We then had the vegetable people, I liked these, especially the newspaper one of them was reading, a nice touch.




























I really liked this mushroom piece, it was a whole bench of them, some of them were being painted red whilst these are getting their white spots added. There was just such an attention to detail.

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