Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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I had heard it, but did not really see it until this summer. I’m talking about the playground for bigger kids at the Luxembourg Gardens. I was more aware of the tot lot that is in a sort of formal garden setting up closer to the Orangerie of the Gardens. We walk right past that tot lot often, and we have gone in to sit and relax once or twice in the past. It is a relatively tame place, compared to the playground for bigger kids. Of course, we’d heard the gleefully screeching crowd of kids may times, but the location of the playground in the middle of the park is not, somehow, on our regular walking routes through the Luxembourg Gardens. However, when you bring 11-year-olds to Paris, you learn about this playground. It costs a few euros for the kids to get in, but this playground is more than worth it. This place was designed by experts in the fields of PLAY and FUN. The playground is organized into sections for different age groups. Our granddaughters Olivia and Sarah (the 11-year-olds) especially like the attraction that consists of cables covered in thick rubber, each with a thick plastic disk at the bottom. The top of each cable is in a track that goes around an area that is roughly 30 by 75 feet. Each kid climbs a not-too-high platform, grabs one of the cables, stands on the disk, and jumps off the platform. This action sends the kid, cable and disk zooming around on the track, finally depositing the kid near the line of kids waiting to play on this attraction. So the kid gets in line again. Here’s a video that shows a sedate version of this attraction in action. Of course, some kids are more like monkeys than kids, so instead of standing on the disk, they do all kinds of acrobatic moves on the cable, turning themselves upside down, sideways, etc. Or, those inclined to make friends quickly will gang up three or so at a time, hold onto each other, and take three cables around in a little bundle of zooming, screeching creatures. The playground has a number of other clever attractions, consisting of variations on the jungle-gym theme, slides, ropes, spinning in circles, etc. Adults who accompany the kids can either pay to enter and hang around superfluously among the gleeful hoards, so they can pay for their kids to enter, but remain outside the fence on metal chairs, observing the playground from a saner, safer distance. That’s what we did yesterday. Tom and I sat just outside the fence among the parents and other grandparents, and had a great time watching the girls play for an hour and a half at the end of the day. Dan, their dad, went for a walk in the park. This adventure was a reward of sorts for the girls, because earlier they’d completed one of their summer homework assignments: postcards. We’d taken them for a very late lunch at the Mondrian Café again, and then walked to the colorful Carrefour de Buci so that the girls could select and buy a few postcards from a tourist shop. These we took back to the apartment, where the girls used little notebooks that I’d given them to compose and write drafts of postcard messages that they would send to their teacher, Ms. Wallace, back in Louisville. After the drafts were corrected, they copied the final messages onto the postcards. You cannot imagine how much work this was! We were all more than ready for the Luxembourg Gardens after this task was done. Earlier in the afternoon, Tom and I chose to walk from our apartment in the 15th to the one in the 6th where Dan and the girls are staying. The weather was perfect for walking, so we did not go the direct way. Instead, we meandered around UNESCO, which finally has completed its exterior renovations. Then we sauntered through the last hour of the open air market on the avenue de Saxe. Here and there in the 7th arrondissement, we noticed police waiting in rows of paddy wagons. Some policemen were in riot gear. They must have been expecting some demonstrations or other activity, which we never saw happen. (And today, I see nothing in the French news about anything that would have merited such preparation for chaos.) We rested briefly in the little park next to the Saint François Xavier church. Then we strolled across the 7th on the rue de Babylone, heading straight toward another church, the great hulking Saint Sulpice. The entire walk, which would normally take about 45 minutes at a brisk pace along a direct route, took us at least an hour and a half. By the time we took the metro home in the evening, we were tired, but happily so. We managed to exit the Emile Zola station just in time to buy one of the last half dozen baguettes remaining in the organic bakery on the rue Fondary before it closed at 8PM. Bread, fruit and cheese. That was all we needed to end a lovely day in Paris. |
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Light
fixture over the bar at the Mondrian Café appears to be on a pulley. The service is friendly at the Mondrian,
and the staff members there like kids.
Ceiling
of the Mondrian Café, where you can eat anytime.
The
playground at the Luxembourg Gardens.
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