It's February... maybe the bleakest month in Paris, and maybe the best time to hit the secondhand shops and museums.
I first visited Paris on a rainy November day and still fell in love with it. But just as internet photos of Paris CDG airport almost all seem to show gleaming expanses of modernity, photos of Paris at all times of year often skip over the stuff you'd rather wasn't there. I thought I would show you a bit of the Luxembourg Gardens without the cropping. It's a bare, muddy place at this time of year!
You might think it's muddy just because it's February, but in fact, there's never grass here.
When the trees are in bloom it looks a lot better.
But the French "gardens" with only fenced-off grass will alway puzzle me. To me, that ruins the whole point of gardens.
And they're especially ugly in the winter.
Interlude: I saw a bunch of teenage girls standing in front of this statue giggling. They had been assigned to sketch it for an art class. It is by Jules Dalou and represents the minor god Silenus (tutor of Dionysus/Bacchus).
I will just never think amputated trees are pretty.
It does get better. The section of the gardens in front of the Senate palace does have grass. You're just not allowed to do anything but look at it from behind a fence.
A very public place to read!
