I’m going to try and make this post less of a what I did this week list than the last ones, but I do want to talk about the Tour Montparnasse and Eiffel Tower visits, mostly because I got a picture of the Eiffel Tower as we were leaving that had a pretty cool composition and I just had to draw it. The Montparnasse visit was fairly underwhelming, as the building is just a big ugly tower, but the view was pretty good and I did learn that the x-ray scanners at security checkpoints are potentially bad for my film, which I did not know before. Whether or not my photos are damaged beyond recognition will not be determined until I develop them upon my return to UMW, but for now I am making an effort to not take the camera to places where there is likely to be a security checkpoint. The Eiffel Tower was beautiful, and the height wasn’t as much of a problem for me as I thought it would be. The view was beautiful, especially since we were there at sunset, and right before I went down I saw the full moon.
Now that I am done with the obligatory Eiffel Tower portion of the post, I want to talk a little bit about the public parks we’ve been to around the city. The most famous is the Luxembourg Gardens, which were beautiful and expansive, but a bit crowded for me.
Parc Montsouris is right across from our campus, and is not as large as the Luxembourg, but the layout is very different. The most notable features of the park are the ravine for the RER B train tracks that cuts through the center of the park, and a decently sized pond. The general layout is much more picturesque than the Luxembourg, leaning heavily into the English style of gardens, with lots of winding paths that take you into heavily wooded spaces or around wide grassy areas. Both this park and the Luxembourg have a number of statues throughout them, which really adds to the atmosphere of the space.
There have been a few other parks that we’ve been to, but my favorite of the bunch is the Parc de Bercy, and only partly because we got to ride a carousel. This park has roughly the same area as Parc Montsouris, but it is linear, with less wide open spaces, and leans slightly more into the French style of gardens. My favorite parts of this park are the water feature that goes through the center, and the small wooded areas that are a bit more secluded from the other parts of the park.
Until next time!
