Institut du Monde Arabe and Gardens

Community Highlights Europe Institut du Monde Arabe and Gardens

May 14, 2019 — Day 5 (Tuesday)

Got real sleep last night. What a relief! Woke ready to face the world. We’re back to cereal for breakfast and checked email. I noticed missing paintings on the apartment walls (only nails in the wall) and emailed Joyce, our landlady, about it. She asked me to describe the missing paintings! How do you describe something that isn’t there? I checked the rental web site and discovered three wood carvings in the living room and a wall hanging in the bedroom were missing. I suggested she look at the web site because the pictures weren’t good enough for me to describe them, but she should remember them since they are hers.

We walked to Gobelins looking for more tour information and again they weren’t open so we decided to do one of our Paris Walks. We hopped the #7 Metro at Les Gobelins and changed to #10 at Jussieu exiting at Maubert-Mutualité where our Paris Walk began. There was a market at the Metro stop so I got market photos. I love French markets! We then walked down blvd. Saint-Germain as directed on our Paris Walk until a church caught our eye so we detoured a block to Eglise Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet and explored the beautiful old church with a pretty little square beside it. The church is a little unusual in that since 1977, after expelling the parish priest and his assistants, the church has been used by the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X and remains in the Society's hands. If you long for the good old days, this is where you will find them.

As we explored our little detour, we couldn't help but notice a restaurant called Breakfast in America. We couldn't figure out why anyone in Paris with all those lovely croissants would want an American breakfast, but there were people inside. Back on track we found the Institut du Monde Arabe and decided lunch would be a good idea before we entered. Walked back to Le Relais Fac and were seated. I got gigot d’agneau and Ed got the pintade (guinea hen) on special that we washed down with a nice Bordeaux. We both had the chocolate mousse for dessert. It seems to be mostly a student café and was very friendly. [Le Relais Fac Brasserie at 13 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75005 Paris; tel: +33 (0)1 7717-8434]

Thus fortified we continued to the Institut du Monde Arabe and entered. A pleasant young lady gave us information and we bought museum tickets and took one of about 8 elevators to the seventh floor. You enter the museum on floor seven and work your way down to the fourth floor. There was a special exhibit, "A la Plume au Pinceau au Crayon, dessins du Monde Arabe" in the museum and it was fascinating. After going through that and the permanent exhibit, we took the elevator up to the roof for fabulous views over Paris. They have a restaurant on the roof so Ed got a hot chocolate and I got the famous mint tea. On a cool, windy day, hot mint tea was perfect. The view included a spectacular setting of Notre Dame Cathedral and you could see the temporary white canvas roof they had set up on it. Click here for the Institut du Monde Arabe web site

Back to street level, we crossed Quai Saint-Bernard and entered Jardin Tino Rossi where you can walk along the Seine enjoying the river and the wonderful sculpture garden. The garden stretches along the Seine from the Institut du Monde Arabe to the Jardin des Plantes. Work by the biggest names in contemporary sculpture is displayed in a free open-air sculpture museum. You'll see sculptures by Brancusi, César, Ipoustéguy, Rougemont, Zadkine, Schoffer, Stahly and many others. There are trees and benches. We walked through taking pictures of sculptures and flowers, then exited that garden at the Jardin des Plantes and fought our way across a very busy Quai Saint-Bernard to Place Valhubert to enter the Jardin des Plantes with many happy Parisians enjoying a gorgeous day.

The Jardin des Plantes is the main botanical garden in France. It started life as the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants in the 17th century. The grounds of the Jardin des Plantes contain four buildings that are officially considered museums and are labelled musée de France, and the French Museum of Natural History calls them galeries. They are the Gallery of Evolution, the Gallery of Mineralogy and a Library, the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy and the Gallery of Botany and Geology. We managed to visit the Gallery of Paleontology and the Gallery of Evolution during our visit this trip. In addition to the gardens and the galleries, there is also a small zoo, the ménagerie du Jardin des plantes, founded in 1795 by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre from animals of the ménagerie royale de Versailles. The gardens are free but there are charges for the galleries and the little zoo which is very popular with Paris children . . . at least it certainly was the several times we've been there. We claimed a bench near the Galerie de Minerologie to rest our weary feet.

After we recovered, we headed out of the garden past the Grande Mosquée de Paris to the Censier-Daubenton Metro stop where we cut across to our favorite boulanger for our demi-blondie du jour. We also stopped at the local pharmacy for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and didn’t check the label. When we got home, we discovered it was not the medicinal 10% vol. but 30% vol. to bleach one’s hair. That will do us no good so perhaps we can exchange it tomorrow.

Checked my email and Joyce, our landlady, said her manager “thought” a previous renter had removed the art objects from the walls and put them in a drawer someplace. Would I check all the drawers?! Well, yes . . . was this supposed to be a vacation? I went through all her very messy drawers and in the top drawer in the cabinet under the television I found the bedroom wall hanging but several beads were caught under the drawer liner and I wasn’t going to break it by pulling it out. I did fold everything else in the drawer including a rather large round plastic tablecloth someone had balled up and stuffed into the drawer. After I folded everything in the drawer, suddenly there was lots of room in it.

The search continued . . . I finally found the wooden carvings in a large basket in the bedroom closet. I left them there because we didn’t want to try to hang them. The closet door hasn’t been closing completely and we discovered a pile of clothes hangers on the floor that kept catching the door. We put them back up on the rod and magically the door closed. I emailed Joyce and told her where the things were and then emailed her derelict agent with the same information and also asked about clean sheets each week. Should be interesting.

Had a French picnic and planned for a trip to Saint-Germain-en-Laye sometime soon.

This featured blog entry was written by Beausoleil from the blog Paris Blog and Lots of Tips for Visitors.
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