We set out in the morning, and were surprised to find a flea market in the street pretty much right outside of our apartment! It was neat to walk around and see the various things that people had for sale. Down on the main boulevard, there was a regular market as well. There were vendors with fresh fruit, fish, meat, bread, and many other things. There was even a couple of vendors who just sold olives. I could smell them walking by… 🤢
Then we took the train over to Jardin des Plantes. It was a nice garden with different sections for different varieties of plants. There was a section with roses, and a really cool section we walked through with alpine plants (which live in the mountains). There was even a pistachio tree that was planted in the 1700s!
The gardens were also right beside the zoo. Through the bushes and fences, we saw a red panda, and a couple of kangaroos! Not really what you expect to see through the bushes in Paris…
We went to a boulangerie in the area for lunch, bought a couple of sandwiches, and headed back to the park to eat in the shade. It was sunny with a high of 25, which felt warm…but it was going to get warmer through the week! Along with the food, I bought a latte at one of the kiosks in the garden. It was €4 (~$6.50 Canadian) and it was machine-made and not amazing. Live and learn.
Next we walked to a Roman amphitheatre. It was discovered when someone tried to develop this particular piece of land for construction. The amphitheatre was preserved, and it is a nice open space. It seemed like there was an event going on. There was a crowd of people and some tents. The really neat thing, though, was the acoustics. When we were on the opposite side of the amphitheater from the crowd, we could still hear them. It was kind of like we were standing in a crowded room with a low hum of conversation all around us, except we were 50m away from the crowd, outside in the open air, and there was nobody close to us. It was a pretty neat effect.
There were a few groups of people playing Boules. It’s a pretty common game in France, we saw it several times. There is a small coloured ball that gets tossed on the ground, and then each player has some heavy metal balls that they toss to try to get as close to the coloured ball as possible. Whoever gets the closest wins. I have a funny story about another game we saw, but we’ll get there.
After the amphitheater we walked up toward the Seine (the main river that runs through Paris). And when we got there, we were at the Notre Dame Cathedral!
It’s a beautiful cathedral, and very recently restored. There was a fire in 2019 which burned the wooden spire, the wooden roof, and damaged the upper walls. There was a very expensive project to restore and reconstruct the historic cathedral, and it was reopened in 2024. We didn’t go inside (we did so later in the week) but it was awesome to see it up close! There was a huuuuge crowd of people in line to go in.
Notre Dame is on the Île de la Cité, which is an island in the Seine. We walked to the other end of the island to see a small square that we had learned about, and an equestrian statue. There are several equestrian statues in Paris, which depict one of the kings riding a horse. We also saw, and walked across, Pont Neuf. That means “New Bridge”, and funny enough, it’s the oldest bridge in the city. Actually the North half (from the island to the North bank of the Seine) was under construction and inaccessible, but we walked across on the South side.
While we were in the square, we saw another group playing Boules. At one point, a guy rolled his ball quite fast toward his opponent’s ball, which was close to the target. He wanted to hit the opponent’s ball farther away, basically. Anyway, as the ball was speeding along, it hit a small rock, and jumped right overtop of the ball it was aiming for! The guy immediately threw his next ball in the same way, trying to do the same thing. And evidently he was very consistent, because it hit the exact same rock and leaped in the exact same way! We all got a good laugh out of that one!
After Île de la Cité, we started walking toward the Jardin du Luxembourg. On the way, we stopped at another church, Église Saint-Sulpice. They were doing a presentation inside, they had someone doing readings and an organ player playing songs. It wasn’t a mass or anything, seemed like more of a recital or some other event. At one point, the organ played the Star Wars theme! Kinda surprising. It was a very beautiful church, we walked around and took pictures.
Then we arrived at Jardin du Luxembourg. It’s a park that has chess tables! I didn’t play, but I watched some people playing, which was fun. There were quite a lot of people out playing chess!
Then we went and visited the Statue of Liberty.
Yep.
There are actually a few Statues of Liberty in Paris. The one in Jardin du Luxembourg was created by Auguste Bartholdi in preparation for the much larger one that he would make for New York. We will also see the scale replica that he made, which is about a quarter the size of the New York statue and stands close(ish) to the Eiffel Tower.
After Jardin du Luxembourg it was getting to be suppertime, and we were exhausted, so we hopped on the train and went back to the Airbnb. Next up, we’ll be getting our first views of the Eiffel Tower, and heading up to the top! Well… at least one of us made it to the top… Stay tuned! 😉
