Scenes in Paris: Jardin des Plantes

After we landed, we made it to our Parisian pied-a-terre around 10:30 in the morning to find that there was no electricity, no juice, no nothing. We called the apartment managers who found out that the electric company (EDF) had inexplicably turned off the power the day before. "It's France!" she told me. So it was.

This little situation didn't get resolved until about 4pm that afternoon, but we had used the time to nap and decompress after the long flight. There's nothing like trying to sleep in steerage to make you truly appreciate an actual bed! Once it all got fixed, we headed out to enjoy the rest of the day, such as it was.

We headed to the Jardin des Plantes (Garden of Plants - so original!) for a stroll and some late touristing. We timed our visit perfectly since it was May and all of the flowers were blooming, including roses as large as my fist. And they smelled heavenly. Yes, I stopped and smelled lots and lots of roses.

There were actually multiple gardens, within gardens, some next to the Museum of Natural History and some next to the zoo on the other side of the main garden.

We strolled and just took in the beautiful flowers which were everywhere. At one point, though, we heard the strangest animal sound. We each thought it sounded like a Kookaburra, a native Australian bird whose call sounds like a laugh. We were near the zoo, so we figured they probably had some. Weirdly, enough, though, we were walking away from the zoo and the noise got louder. We came upon a shallow water feature with a bunch of people standing around. I heard the noise again and everyone pointed at the water. There was no Kookaburra, there was a GINORMOUS FROG making that noise. It was so cool! And, the little guy was actually really cute. (No, I didn't kiss it.)

What was wonderful as well was how many people were there just reading and relaxing on the grass, as if it wasn't a Friday night and time had just stopped. It was very peaceful and pleasant. The perfect ending to our first day.

Some major highlight pictures:

Fire and Ice!

The fabulous carousel with strange (and possibly extinct) creatures.

Giant irises!