Paris: May 17: S. Le Marais, Ile St Louis, Jardin des Plantes Quarters

It was another beautifully temperate day to walk around a pretty city, though this day was brightly sunny (in contrast to the others). We spent the whole day walking. Though we didn't do everything I'd ambitiously planned, it nevertheless ended up being a long, exhausting day, and a day on which we didn't see any sights people would consider important.

My pictures provide a sampling of the things we saw. Di Yin also took pictures. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #141 in the album). When you see a picture with the caption "another day" (with the Eiffel Tower in the background) (picture #215), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

We began by walking through the south side of Le Marais, a district we explored the rest of already: 1, 2. On Rue de Temple, we found many necklace shops and handbag shops, often engaging in large transactions only (i.e., buying in bulk).

We crossed over to Ile Saint Louis, explored it, then hopped back briefly into Le Marais, and then strolled over to the neighborhood across the river surrounding Jardin des Plantes. On the island, Rue Saint Louis en l'Ile has many cute shops. We also realized that it's cooler and winder near the Seine, yet another reason to want to be near it. Back in Le Marais, Rue Saint Paul is a nice street. Though I don't like the stores as much as Rue Saint Louis en l'Ile, I think I like the feel more. (See the photograph.)

We stopped in Pavillon de L'Arsenal, which turned out to be the highlight of our day. The main exhibit covers how Paris grew architecturally and geographically. It explores how commercial interests and political will influenced the result, and how the changes were implemented through building codes and zoning changes. The museum has a number of models and videos. Upstairs are pictures and discussions of major new buildings and renovations in Paris in the last few decades.

We then wandered around for quite a while hunting for food, eventually finding Comptoir Mediterranee, an adorable little deli that serves food from Lebanon. The guy running the show spoke French, Japanese, and English with Di Yin and was a friendly hoot. I wonder if he spoke more languages. He ended up showing Di Yin pictures of his Japanese friends' children. I thought it might be a one-man joint--he assembled our sandwiches for us--but someone came in to help him at some point. Also, he played (American) jazz music over the cafe's speakers.

After lunch we explored the neighborhood around Jardin des Plantes. Obviously, we had to go in Jardin des Plantes, Paris's botanical garden. We didn't explore much of the garden but did discover there's a zoo. There were some pens, including one of kangaroos, outside the menagerie proper; we enjoyed the sights (and smells) of the animals. There are also some themed gardens; we spotted the alpine one. Also, in search of the labyrinth (which turned out to be a spiral), we climbed to the high point in the garden (which turned out to be nothing special except for the nice breeze).

In this area, we also stopped by the Grand Mosque, where we sat and rested for a while. We passed near a church with (according to my guide book) a classical (a la Roman) interior, but not close enough to detour to see it for variety.

Heading back toward the Latin Quarter, we made our way to Paris's Pantheon. Built in the eighteenth century, there's no Roman history to it, just Roman architectural style. It's been at times a church and at times not (right now it's not). Sadly, it was too late in the afternoon: the Pantheon was closing soon and we decided it wasn't worth the entrance fee to go in given the time we had.

We walked up and down the noted old street Rue Mouffetard. The southern side is a market street as good as our local one, Rue Montorguiel. We heard more English here than in other parts of Paris. It's a more medieval part of Paris (near the heart of the Left Bank) with correspondingly more tourists.

Here, we ran into a friend of Di Yin who's working on her dissertation while living in Paris. She was sitting outside by a cafe having a drink with her cousin. It was a shock to run into someone Di Yin knows at random in a foreign city. We sat and joined them and chatted for a while.

Later, when they had to run, we took the metro back up to near our apartment to eat at Les Philosophes, the same restaurant we ate at on our first night. It was still good.