Today Rachel and I did another of our assigned walks (Walk 3). This walk took us through Montparnasse, which has not been my favorite part of Paris so far. But then to the Luxembourg gardens, which were beautiful. The sky was blue, it was warm outside, birds were chirping, blah blah blah.
Rachel and I found two little chairs by the big fountain and just sat there for hours doing nothing (along with hundreds of other people). Here we observed something I love about French culture (and something which I think we can all learn from). The sweetness of doing nothing. These people come here to just sit, and eat, and look around. There doesn't have to be live music, conversation, nothing. It is enough to just sit and enjoy.
After the walk I wandered off on my own. Today there are huge riots all over Paris about the elections. I went to a little bit of President Sarkozy's speech, but I couldn't see him on account of how many people there were.
I bought myself a double scoop of gelato, rambled around and almost ran into the Notre Dame. I sat on a bench right in front of it to eat my gelato, licking my fingers and everything. I was trying to remember all the things I learned about it in art history, but none of them were coming to me. I was just thinking "It's really cool that I'm sitting here eating ice cream by myself staring at the Notre Dame on such a beautiful day."
I found this old man who was making little paintings of the Seine. I wanted to buy one, but they were too expensive, so I just sat there and played with his little dog for as long as I felt was appropriate and not creepy.
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