Took advantage of the novelty of having a visitor to show around town – not to mention the splendid weather - to explore just a couple of the buildings, whose doors were thrown open to the public this weekend for the annual Journée du Patrimoine.
As in London and Sydney, every year Historic Houses and Municipal Buildings all over the city are opened to a keen and curious public and Paris is no different – except the scale of the buildings is slightly more ambitious!
The atmosphere was bustling and good-natured (despite impressive queues for some of the buildings) and the crowds of locals were quite a contrast to the recent crowds of holidays-makers I’ve encountered on my wanderings.
We enjoyed the exotic orchids at the Jardins de Luxembourg greenhouses, marveled at Foucault’s Pendulum at the Pantheon (not to mention gasping at the sheer grandiosity of the final resting place of all La Belle France’s Grands Hommes) and finally admired the extravagant decoration at Elise de Val de Grace.
On the way home we had to stop at Berthillion for an icecream, where we discovered that the Chocolat-Myrtille (Wild Blue-berry) Combo is real crowd-pleaser as well.
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