A week in Paris

Bonjour

After a week in England, we met up in Paris as Lee was working at the Australian Embassy for a week. We stayed at a hotel next to the Embassy which also happens to be right near the Eiffel Tower, so as Lee trudged off to work every morning I walked Paris. And walked. And walked.

According to Fitbit I walked about 43 kms around Paris. Sounds about right

It sounds a lot, but one of the nice things about Paris is that you don’t have to go far before you see something beautiful, different or just curious. So there was a lot of distractions as I was walking. Around every corner was a small garden, a church (much grander and older than anything in Australia) or shops. As I am writing this, I realise most of my photos are of gardens, so you’ve been warned.

I usually had a rough plan of where I was going, but often ended up finding unexpected gems that I never knew were there. I avoided the major tourist traps (tried to go to Musee D’Orsay but the queues were crazy so maybe another time). Here are some of my discoveries…..

Just around the corner from our hotel was the Jardin des enfants Juifs du Velodrome d’hiver or Garden of the Jewish children of the winter velodrome. This is a really sad place. The garden opened in 2017 and is just a small park on the place where the Vel D’Hiv (winter velodrome) was located. In July 1942 the French police rounded up all the Jews living in that area and took them to the velodrome where they were detained for some time before being loaded on to trucks bound for concentration camps. The garden is a memorial to all the children who were part of this group and there is a long wall with all their names and ages, as well as photos of some of them.

Inscribed in this wall are the 3,900 Jewish children who were rounded up and deported to concentration camps.

Here is a close up of the wall. It shows the names and ages of the children who were deported. In total, over 13,000 Jews were arrested over two days in July, 1942 in the nearby area.

There were a number of photos of the children (with their families) whose names are included in the memorial.

Here is a photo of the original velodrome with the carriages waiting to ‘deport’ the families.

The photo on the left shows the entrance to the original velodrome with the carriages waiting to ‘deport’ the families. The photo on the right, showing the entrance to the garden, is more or less the same location today (see the overhead railway line in the top left corner).

On another day I discovered the Catherine Labouré garden. I first noticed this because (fun fact) we had a nun at our convent in primary school with this name. The garden was named after a young nun who had apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the 14^th century in the chapel adjoining the garden. It is a walled garden that was the former nuns kitchen garden. There are what looks like community garden vege plots, an arbor planted with vines and many fruit trees and it’s just a nice place to sit and do nothing for a while. I love that there seems to be lots of places like this (even small squares) for all those apartment dwelling Parisiens.

And the last time I rabbit on about a garden (for this post anyway) is this little patch that I found. I was on my way to visit the Museum of Modern Art (don’t bother – the Pompidou Centre is MUCH better). There was a bare patch of land near the Palais de Tokyo and so an artist was commissioned to do something with it. He recruited some amateur gardeners who lived in the area to develop a small patch along the lines of allotment gardens. Each one developed a different aesthetic, with flowers, herbs, veges etc as well as a beehive. Some are very tidy and manicured and others are a bit messy with quirky garden ornaments. With all the concrete and hard surfaces around, it looks so lovely (in summer anyway, winter is probably a bit different).