Exploration

      Well, yesterday and today have been days of pure exploration of the city.  I am of course exhausted, but sitting here in the cool shade of the living room feels quite good.  Yesterday I bought a Carte Navigo (bus/metro pass) and my plan originally was to practice the routes to and from the place where I will be having French classes for the next two weeks, the Foyer International des Etudiantes [FIE].  However, it was so incredibly easy that it seemed wasteful to just go there, so I crossed the street and headed into the Jardin du Luxembourg.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and the park was filled with joggers, college students sprawled on the grass, old ladies doing yoga, and young families racing their toy boats in the large pool.

Le Palais du Luxembourg

      There were of course a wide variety of people with tiny easels set up sketching the flowers and fountains and the obligatory British tourist looking completely lost and juggling several different maps at once.  I toured the grounds a bit before heading inside the garden side of Le Orangerie (modern art museum attached to the garden) to view the current exhibit on the findings of the French explorer and botanist Louis Antoine de Bougainville.  You might recognize his last name as it the the same as the flowering vine that was named after him.  The exhibit was incredibly well done in that it was mostly plants and less long paragraphs upon paragraphs of information.
      One of the ladies that worked there was kind enough to individually show me around the exhibit and show me the highlights.  At each plant, she scooped up a small handful of the dead leaves and crushing them in her hand, held them up for me to smell the different scents of each.  The spicy cinnamon, pithy mandarin, and earthy cocoa were definitely my favorite.  She would point out the tiny flowers on each and in her most simplified French possible, described each of the trees' and shrubs' uses.  Quite interesting.  Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and thus the art museum portion was closed, but I put it down as definitely a place to return.  I have started making a list of the places that I want to go while I'm here, and slowly I have been marking down which bus/metro routes I need to take to get there so that when I have a free couple of hours I can hop over quickly for a bit of sightseeing.
    After leaving the garden and its wonderful rows of huge sycamore trees, I basically wandered around the streets with nowhere in mind except maybe to eventually end up somewhere near Pont Neuf on the Seine.  What the 5th arrondissement lacks in affordability, it makes up for in its charm.  The winding, cobblestone alleyways, the curling cast iron balconies, and ivy covered stonework quickly make one understand why it is one of the most popular.  Somewhere along the way I ended up in St. Sulpice church which is the same one that I had been wanting to visit since I saw the opera Manon this past spring.  It was that church that the main male lead character went to to become a priest and bemoan his fate after Manon, the love of his life, left him for a more opulent life.  I digress, it was very lovely inside but a bit stuffy on such a still and sunny day, so I trudged on browsing through a small flea market and peeking through the windows of the little shops.
    About an hour later after realizing that I had confused west with north, I finally came upon the Seine and Pont Neuf.

View of Pont Neuf

Love-locks on the Pont des Arts

      Legend has it that if you write you and your lover's name on a padlock, attach it to the bridge and throw the key in the Seine that your love and commitment will last forever, or at least it's a romantic gesture during your honeymoon.  The glittering of all of the locks in the sun was quite a sight but without being there it's hard to picture just how many there were.  The entire bridge was absolutely covered with locks of different colors, sizes, and types.  There was one painted with the Italian flag that was the size of my hand!

      After the bridge, I was feeling quite peckish, so I wandered around until I found a boulangerie where I picked up a sesame-brie baguette sandwich for the walk back to 27 line bus stop.  More good times.  I did manage to get on the right bus, but I got on the one going the opposite direction on the loop, so I had to ride the entire circuit, but it was good to see even more of the city.

      This morning started off bright and early as I had to catch the bus to the FIE for our language test.  Did I mention that our meeting room is on the 8th floor and there are no elevators?  The test went fine except for the fill in the blank part, but I think I'll win them over with my passionate essay on why I don't think it's a good idea for adventure tourists to go to war zones just for the thrill of it (I did have a prompt, so that wasn't just something that popped up :).  After the test, most of us students met up at a little crepe and sandwich stand for lunch where I got a cheese and tomato baguette panini.  We then crossed the street to the Jardin du Luxembourg to eat our lunch on a bench under the shade.  

      When we had finished, a bus was waiting to take us on a tour of the major sights of the center of Paris with Mme Souraqui as our rather entertaining guide.  I would list all of the things that we saw, but that would be too exhausting and my blogs already contain too many long sentences made up of lists of things.  

 -no title necessary-

A not very shy and out of focus pigeon 

So, to conclude, it was very enjoyable and we were all happy to see each other again for a while and chat.  In yet another miracle I found my way back to the apartment on the right bus and am once again about to go eat a late dinner.  Much love to all of yall.

-Kate Alice