Pétanque in the park

OK, today, we really took it easy! We’ve been saying that we have got to slow down—and we resolved to do it. So starting today, we slowed down! After waking late, we leisurely, moseyed on down to the post office to send off a package.

We decided to go to a park and after some discussion and debate, we decided to go back to the Luxembourg Gardens, about a mile away. We have been there before, but didn’t really explore everywhere. This time we walked all the way around it—but not all at once. Every time we saw a vacant bench, we sat down for awhile. It is a very large park with lots of individual areas separated by a wall of trees or bushes. Lots of statues and lots of play areas. There are tennis courts, chess tables, children’s playground equipment, fountains, ponds, and more. We even found the bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty and nearby was an oak tree planted in memory of the 9/11 attack by the French Americans.

At lunch time, we ducked out to buy a sandwich and then went backing the park to eat. It was a very interesting sandwich. It was a square croissant filled in the middle with goat cheese, thinly sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and olives. It had to be eaten with a fork as it was too messy to pick up. The fork and knife they included were made of wood! Very cute items and not at all like our plastic ones in the United States.

We found another area of the park that was built to play péntaque. This the same game as the Italian bocce played with a target ball and everyone rolls larger (these were steel balls) balls trying to get closest to the target. Anyway, it was fun to watch the play while we ate our lunch. One guy had on a long sleeve dress shirt and tie so I guess he was on his lunch break.

Wandering on, we found more benches, and more people! By now it’s 1:30 and it is amazing how many people are there in the park. Youngsters who should be in school-- older ones who should be at work. Maybe everyone gets out early on sunny Fridays!

Interestingly, we found the first palm trees we’ve seen in France! They are probably much more common in Italy, where the builder of this park came from. Anyway, that’s about all we did today—kind of a slow, relaxing day! Oh, one more thing on the way home from the park, we ran into Maridee’s favorite, Gerard Mulot pastry shop! Print this post