Tour Saint Jacques, Notre Dame, and Luxembourg Gardens

I pass this park every day. It also smells nice since all the flowers have bloomed, in the last month or so. For the longest time, due to my terrible sense of smell, I didn't notice that the first 4-5 blocks of my morning commute just smells like garbage. Not always, but passing by this park is a nice relief. Then after that it's mostly an exhaust smell.

But anyway, look how pretty!

Oh yes, there's a big tower in here too. I don't think you can go up otherwise I think I would have noticed a big line or something.

Next stop, climbing the towers of Notre Dame! I didn't get there till just before 1 and there was a long line, about a 40 minute wait. When walking around I stay pretty warm but when I'm just standing around getting rained on, it got pretty cold. I felt really bad for the two girls behind me in line. They were not prepared for the weather.

My sixth floor walk-up has trained me well for this. The climb was actually really easy considering how high up you actually go. Plus it's not all the steps in one go. And if you were looking carefully, there clearly is no place to go but down....but this was my best picture of the stairs so deal with it!

Panorama from halfway up. I did not realize that for this tour, if you're not climbing stairs, you're outside. There is a loose wire cage covering the walkways. Getting around the corner areas are super super narrow walkways (I should have gotten a picture) with a big groove in the center. It was raining the whole time and the groove bit was filled with water so I stepped on the edges. Then I realized I was probably walking in a gutter-turned-walkway-for-tourists. You can see the Eiffel tower off in the distance. And in the misty background on the right hand side, there is a hill with a bump on top, that's Sacre Coeur!

I think the caption for this one will be "sigh...ennui." The gargoyles were really cool. Though Joe tells me these are actually "grotesques" and real gargoyles are water spouty things.

This one is taking a break from being intimidating to eat some grapes.

A real gargoyle apparently.

At the top! You can basically walk all around the top of the south tower. Here is a view toward the west, you can see the little tree-lined area I walk through everyday, then I cross that bridge (it's got the locks on it) and then I keep walking west towards that big tower in the distance, that's the center of the Jussieu campus. The campus is small. Miniscule compared to Davis! It's basically one building that's shaped like a square ring, mostly open in the middle. And that big tower is in the middle.

Afterwards, I headed to the Luxembourg Gardens. There was a fair number of people walking around despite the rain. I'm sure it gets packed when the weather's nice, it's a beautiful place. But you can't go on any of these grass areas.

Hanging out by the ducks. They all came over expecting bread or something. I didn't have any, I felt bad.

Preening duck. Or maybe it was just normal upkeep, I don't know. I saw 6 males and wondered why there weren't any females. Then a male/female couple came gliding over. That male was clearly the alpha. He was quacking at the other males. I'm not sure if ducks have alphas but if they do, that male (not pictured) was it.

Pigeon win.

It was a little dark between the trees!

I explored the side streets looking for dinner.

There were a few restaurants with a rotisserie right outside the door. My rain jacket was beginning to soak through and my feet were wet. The smell was very persuasive.



Guess what I ate! Crossing that off my list. The green color was a little alarming but it was just the sauce. Actually I'm not sure why it was green, it was a buttery, garlicky sauce. I guess another ingredient. It wasn't bad, it was sort like like a cross between a chewy mushroom and a mussel. Except I actually like the taste of mussels and I couldn't really detect the actual taste of the snail much. I also couldn't feel myself munching on internal organs which is my one small complaint about mussels. I was mostly worried about being able to feel myself chewing on the eyestalks. Nope, they must have shriveled or something during the cooking process.

The next course was bœuf bourguignon with pasta and salad. All the salad dressing here tastes the same, and that taste is BAD. Tolerable, but bad. The beef was really good, if I could make meat tender like that, I might actually...buy it and cook it and stuff...

Dessert was sorbet. Lime sorbet (the scoop at the very bottom) is so good, but it had pieces of zest that got in the way. Lime stuff in general is really good, like that lime-avocado fatface fruit pop at Davis farmer's market!

Musée des arts et métiers

I decided to wander around a museum today. I live pretty close to the Musée des arts et métiers (Museum of arts and industry) so off I went. I was pleased to find out that if you're under 26, admission is free! Yay.

A glass alcohol thermometer from 1751.

Items from Lavoisier's lab. Here are some pieces of equipment that were used for measuring out oxygen and hydrogen (the two big things on either side) and they were combined in the glass instrument closer in the back. A spark was applied and boom, water! The video screen in the front showed a nice animation of the process.

Microscope from 1751. Things in the museum mostly fell in the category 1750-1850 or 1850-1950.

A hyperboloid...not really sure what this was for, except for modeling.

Upper and lower cases for uppercase and lowercase letters! I'm not sure that actually merits an exclamation mark but I've never actually seen the upper and lower cases before.

Some kind of flying contraption, I couldn't find an info placard for this.

Replica of Foucault's pendulum. I think the actual one used to be here, I'm not sure where it's displayed now.

1850s Paris. Just kidding, there was an art gallery set up near Foucault's pendulum, steampunk seemed to be the theme.

Back in Paris

Well, I'm back in Paris and the cantine is open again!

Eclairs AND cucumbers. Obviously the cucumbers were my more favoritest part of the lunch.

I tried the quiche and the cherry tart. I'm always amazed at how many choices I have. The pommes rissolees (swirly looking things) were really good too, they're basically mashed potatoes piped into a swirl and fried so there's kind of a crispy crust on them. Sound fun to make. I'm sure they don't make them there, I've seen them at the grocery store in the frozen food aisle.

I splurged a bit today and ate 6 points of food instead of 5. Which was too much!! The tomato was stuffed with a tuna salad and the bottom of the plate is covered in shredded (I'm assuming imitation) crab. There was also 3 tortilla chips on the plate for some reason.... I always get the meringue with creme anglais when available. And my free bread which I wrap up and have as a snack later. But the most interesting part of today's lunch is hiding under those onions on the big plate...

So, today's selection of fish was aile de raie which is, as everyone tells me, a ray. Well, the "wings" of a ray. From some searching on the internets, I guess it's actually a kind of edible skate, like this: (I did not take this picture, the cantine does NOT have an aquarium. Which is too bad.)







But this is what it looks like...after I've eaten all the meat off one side...

A close look at the bones which I thought were cool. Apparently people eat them except for the big piece along the edge. It's all cartilage and it's pretty crunchy and tasteless so I just left it alone.






I've changed my route to and from lab slightly, now I walk on the north side of Notre Dame. This side has all sorts of cool gargolyes! I especially like the ones with wings.

I walk through this tree-lined area that for a while I didn't even know existed. It's never crowded when I'm walking through there. Mornings are especially nice though this was taken this afternoon.

There's a statue/fountain here with pretty flowers all around.

Pretty flowers! Some looked like tulips before they opened up fully but I think maybe they are actually tulips, ruffled tulips??







Like this: (I did not take this photo! But I'm sure there's a flower there that looks like this) There's a couple dark flowers that look like this, with the rufflely edges, they look like tiny little lettuces on a stalk.

Germany part 3

Cruising on the autobahn! There was rain in the distance.

When we got back from our daytrip, the neighbor brought over homemade pretzels and dip!! Soooo good. The dip was onion-based and I still really liked it, THAT is how good it was.

New guy Robbie waiting for dinner.

New girl Annie taking an after dinner nap.

Just prior to boarding this train to Mainz!

The interior is very airplane like. Except there was only around 5-10 other people in this compartment. That was definitely not so for the subsequent 2 trains...

More rain in the distance while on the train.

Germany part II

Okay, workaround...I just took the SD card out and put it into the SD slot in my computer. In my defense, it's almost 11pm and I got up early today!!


Taunusstein

Schloss (castle) Heidelberg, overlooking the city of Heidelberg.

Look what the French did. Granted, the stores of gunpowder did not help.

Different parts of the castle were built by different people so there's a variety of styles.

Crazy sundial (I'm assuming).

The French basically burned it all up. The exterior stone frame is all that remains.

Some interior parts were restored.

There were many coat of arms in the windows. (Oops, I guess maybe coats-of-arms. Like culs-de-sac. And roomsmate. You're welcome, Gilmore Girls fans.)

We went up this spiral staircase!

The city is next to a pretty river.

HUGE wine cask on display. I think it holds something like 220,000 liters?

Slightly smaller wine cask.

I'm in Germany!

Greetings from Germany!

Yesterday, I boarded a high speed train at Gare de l'Est (top speed I saw displayed on the monitor was 312 km/h!) to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.

In the French and Germany countryside, I passed these bright yellow fields of flowers. Solid swaths of yellow. Sorry, the train was moving too fast for good pictures! At some points my entire field of view was just yellow. I'm told they're hops flowers but I need to check up on that.

From Frankfurt, I took a regular train to Wiesbaden Hauptbahnhof. There I was reunited with some old friends, an American couple. We were neighbors 15 years ago in Beijing! It's been sooooo long, I was just 10 years old at the time. I have many fond memories visiting them and their cat and dog (both who passed away within the past few years ): !!!) We walked around Wiesbaden and had lunch at a restaurant with German food!

I had an overwhelming pork hax with a big dumpling and cabbage, Joey shared some of her spargel (asparagus) salad with me which was deeeelicious. Cucumber, tomato, lettuce, smoked salmon, and green and white asparagus!

After walking around Wiesbaden some more, we headed to their home Taunusstein, just a 10 minute drive away. It's a small town with farming land all around. Their particular neighborhood is secluded but still so conveniently located. And so beautiful! This was taken from a short walk this morning with the 3 dogs, maybe 5-10 minutes walk from the house.

Panorama!!

Today we drove to Heidelberg to see the ruins of the castle, we took a very interesting guided tour. Unfortunately, I don't have the USB cable to get the pictures off the camera so all I have are the above pictures from my phone. I guess I left out pictures of my lunch and a very large cheese. So, sorry, you'll have to wait until I get back to Paris!