Another Day, Another Park

So I've just returned to H. L.'s after wandering around the city for a while and seeing a lovely garden. While I am sure that I will go out again later, I'm not sure if I will get a chance to 'blog then, so it seemed best to put down now the things I remember about today and some from before.

First the old. I took the Silver line from South Station to the airport! For most people, this is mind-numbingly mundane, but for me, it was quite an experience. It was also quite an adventure for the little girl sitting behind me. She was probably two or three, and she was still so short that to get off of the Silver line, she had to sit on the step and hop off. It was really cute.

Now the new. My first order of business today was to get train tickets to Oberwolfach. H. L. had directed me to an SNCF (the French train people) office near where he lives, but it was jammed full of people when I got there. Since waiting is for losers, I hopped on the nearest Metro (after buying a day pass for 5.30€. So much less than in Boston) and went to Gare de L'Est. I managed to buy my tickets for the first two trains, but they told me that to get the last leg, I'll need to stop by a ticket window in Germany. Still, not too shabby.



Having finished my pressing business items, I grabbed some lunch in the Latin quarter and headed out to le Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil (the garden of the greenhouses of Auteuil). This is a beautiful little park which I found out about on the plane, reading this article about REM's favorite spots in Paris. Man, were they right! There were very few tourists, and the whole place is a collection of 19th / early 20th century greenhouses surrounded by beautiful gardens. Even better? Since I went in early June, everything was in bloom. I have some pictures of flowers which I've never seen before, as well as picures of more mundane things like buildings and trees. They also had some really neat plants, some of which have super complicated life cycles. For example, one plant reauires a bug called a heironymph (or something) to crawl into its fig and lay eggs. The bug's eggs hatch and the nymphs mature and breed in the fig. The males die off and the females crawl out of the fig, getting covered in pollen, and fly off to other figs to repeat the cycle. Kinda complicated. If this were Kansas, I'd be screaming "intelligent design!"

Tomorrow I'll probably see a park on the other side of Paris. There also seems to be a French version of the museum exhibit "Gross!" about the human body and fun, kinda nasty facts about it. I'd read about this on CNN, so it might be cute to visit. It's not quite the sqme as visiting NY for the Gates in Central Park, but close enough for the likes of me.

As a quick final comment, I got my hands on a copy of the EU's constitution. I was expecting something like that of the States. Nope. It's hundreds of pages of dense legalese and internal references. No wonder people rejected it. It's impossible to understand what's going on!