A Year in Paris: Kate's Friends from Newton

April 18th, 2018

Two of Kate's best friends from Newton are here this week visiting. It's their April break, and both of them flew over by themselves to spend the week with us in Paris. We're excited to have them here and looking forward to lots of adventures.

In Saint Sulpice

On Sunday, while they were still quite jet-lagged, we decided to keep them awake with activities all day but tried to choose ones that were pretty low-key. We started the day with pastries from Gerard Mulot. Then we went to hear the organ at Saint Sulpice in the morning, stopped to get chocolate mousse at Chapon afterwards, and then headed to the Jardin des Plantes.

Part of the Roman Amphitheater

A street in the Quatier Latin

Our route took us past some interesting historical sites in the Quartier Latin, such as remnants of the Paris city wall from the 12th Century, an excavated Roman amphitheater that is now a park, and a 12th Century tower now on the grounds of one of France's premier Lycées, Henri-IV. We also learned that the Jardin des Plantes was established as a medicinal garden in 1635 by Louis XIII and has been an important site for the study of botany, geology, paleontolgy, and other sciences since then. In the 19th Century, it obtained large numbers of exotic plants that had been previously unknown to Western science, and has maintained them in huge greenhouses. In addition to the gardens, it has a zoo and world-famous museums on natural history, including the Grand Gallery of Evolution, which I mentioned a few posts ago. The girls wanted to visit the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes. (Glenn and I had been just a couple of weeks ago, but Kate had missed that trip and we were happy to go again.) We also walked through the beautiful and charming Jardin Alpin, just adjacent to the zoo.