jardin

Since its pouring outside, and I don't have an umbrella, I stayed up home, did the laundry, vacuumed the floor, edited my photos, SUBMITTED MY URECA (Praise the Lord its over!), and now I'm going to talk about my solo trip to Jardin du Luxembourg last saturday :)

Took a longer route to a different train station and the morning walk was really pleasant. Stumbled upon an interesting looking street clock - which they had an event there for Fête de la Musique later in the evening.

There were many interesting shops along the way to Jardin du Luxembourg, but my favourite was the flower shop. I loved the smell of fresh flowers, and the colours of the flowers were just beautiful. Never seen such colourful peonies, lavenders and other flowers I cannot recognise hahaha. It was like an appetiser to the garden.

Walked into the garden from the back gate and this was what i saw. Beautiful statue with lush greenery, and flowers in full bloom.

Normally when the sun is THIS bright in Singapore, it'd probably be 30 degree celsius out. But that day it was a beautiful cool breezy 20 degrees.

An overview of the garden surrounding the palace - did not manage to go in because I forgot to bring my visa along with me and therefore would have to pay to enter! :(

Walking towards the palace/museum, you'd see rows of white sculptures lined up along the sides of the pavement. There were kids running around, children playing and groups of people sitting in circles singing random songs beautifully :) It was such a beautiful interesting sight!

I was so amused by the children riding on ponies around the park, unfortunately, when i walked to the place where the ponies were resting they all looked really sad... Not a strong animal lover or anything, but I felt sorry for the horses.

People dress up in costumes from the past. For I have no idea what reason! But somehow around Palaces, there are always groups of people like these.

There's so much to see in the garden. I could just walk and roam around on my own. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring snacks or any form of food so by noontime, I was starving! Not to mention, seeing everyone else having picnics in groups made me hungrier (and lonelier. But I was soaking up the beauty of the graden to mind at that time).

Really cool how the parisians just spend their saturdays at a park, running, talking a walk with their significant other, sitting down on these chairs available EVERYWHERE and have a picnic while enjoying the breeze, and letting their children roam free around the garden. Work life balance they call it.

//Sidetrack//

But this also means that I can't get hold of the bank on a Sunday and having issues with documents in french and my money not showing up in the balance of my account becomes terribly frustrating! //

Loved how there "fence bushes" were cut out in such a unique pattern!

Another thing interesting about the park were people playing with boats in this pond. Typically we would expect to see motorised boats with remote controls etc. (Reminds me of the time we had to build our own boat from scratch during one of our modules. The horror just recalling it.) but here, they were playing it with a stick. Teenagers, children, adults, all lined up to get a boat and a stick and they jab and poke at the boat, attempt to create waves in the pond with their stick, just to get the boat to the black house there. It was so primitive! Loved it! Hahaha!

After I bought a sandwich and sat at one of the chairs to eat, I left the garden and headed to the Latin Quarter. Since I'm at an attempt to keep my blog post shorter and more readable, i'll post photos of my walk around the latin quarter in another post. Thats all for now!

Jardin du Luxembourg

29 June 2014 Luxembourg Gardens, 75006 Paris, France

The French have an awesome work life balance, so shops usually close on Sundays: shops including the supermarkets!! Everything in the area I live in (same can be said for the rest of Paris) is pretty much closed - give or take a few asian food shops.
Since the family wanted to go to the Chauteux de Versailles, we hopped on to one of the Grand Lignes in Gare Montparnasse and headed for Versailles.

Exiting from the station of Versailles, we see a small-town like area, with streets lined with mini bars and food shops.

This area surprisingly had very few people. It was as if we were transported into a quiet old town in the countryside with a population of like 30. Hahaha!

We had no map, no nothing so we just followed the street signs, and then the number of people started increasing as we were walking, and we knew we were heading in the right direction.

Walk towards the crowd and you'd be right on track!

After walking for a couple of minutes, we were faced with the massive grand castle with WONDERFUL Architecture.

The castle is beautiful. This picture (and those below) are just UNABLE to do justice to it. Its massiveness is just. wow. You'd be in awe if you saw it in real life.

Typical sight in famous tourist attractions. They had an exhibition of old antique cars and a private event at the square right outside of the castle, and here's a pro taking a shot of some strangers on one of the cars, and the famous Louis XV's statue in the background. Felt inferior with my iPhone and selfie stick at that moment.

Behold the Golden Gates! Many failed jump shots were attempted here. We gave up after probably 20 tries and went through the gates.

And Viola. We had to try another 200x to get a nice shot. This is one of the less fail ones. Somehow Zara and I just fail at coordinating to 123, but it turned out okay... Acceptable-ish!

Close ups of the statues!

The Hall of Mirrors. For the narcissist haha!

It was magnificent inside the castle. Its hard to imagine owning everything there, such wealth. It unfathomable. Its amazing how the ceilings of roofs are all painted differently, and the decoration of each room coordinated from bed sheets to wallpaper to furniture. It was creepy, interesting and enviable all at the same time.

My favourite part of the castle. The Arcades. It exude a serenity that was a stark contrast to the massive crowd attempting to get a picture with it (it was cordoned off). I found the contrast really amusing to be honest. Nevertheless, just looking at this picture makes me feel as though my world is at peace.

After Exiting the castle, we went to the garden behind the palace, linking to Marie-Antoinette's Estate, where she fled to during an attack. (OK I'm not very familiar with the history, but yeah, after the passing of Louis XIV, and somewhere before/during the reign of Louis XV, Marie-Antoinette's Estate was built if I'm not wrong. Don't quote me on this.)

Here's Zara being a monkey.

The Garden outside the Palaces of Versailles was HUGE. MASSIVE. VAST. I was wondering the whole time, what do people in the time of Louis XV do in the garden. Did they just walk? People could die there and nobody would have known. And what if the king was somewhere, and they needed him urgently? How would his magistrates/dukes known where to find him. He didn't have a phone. How did they deal with emergencies? They probably rode horses...? Did they have the soldiers comb through the castle to find the King? Turns out Huan Zhu Ge Ge didn't do a good job educating me on this. I swear I'm not weird.

- My phone died when we headed to Marie Antoinette's Estate, so pictures on FB from my sister's Iphone-

Anyway, Marie-Antoinette's Estate, as expected was not as grand. Like duh, he had to run away from the Main Palace.

After Visiting all the attractions in the area, we chanced upon this beautiful small vintage greenhouse looking stall. Couldn't resist going in, and I was glad I did. Found post cards written by lovers dating back to 1930s maybe even earlier. :)

I find it cool reading about old love stories between lovers in the past who had to write letters. I would form the characters in my head imagine they were in some form of a secret long distance relationship. I am NOT weird. I swear. Hahaha!

The trip to Versailles is something not to be missed. I got judged by some Parisians who went "why do all asians want to go to versailles?!" we don't have such palaces/castles with painted ceilings, with gold plated muriel edges, and huge ass gardens with colourful flowers and a temperature of 20degrees thats why. Hahah! I loved it there. If i could, i'd bring everyone who came to Paris to visit me to Versailles.