Paris: Luxembourg Gardens

Jardin:  "garden "

 I'm in the Luxembourg Gardens where I just finished my very nice picnic consisting of olives, cheese, cornichons, taboule, a Coke Zero, some candy, and a nice salami/cheese/tomato/Dijon mustard sandwich.  Coke Zero is what we Americans know as Diet Coke.

The Gardens are packed with apparently ever smoker in Paris as well as people of all ages in all sorts of clothing from suits to bourkas.  OK...maybe I haven't seen a bourka in the Gardens, but I did on the Metro here.

One of the wonderful and very Parisian things to do while in the French capital is to take a picnic.  The sun-loving Parisians love their picnics.  Unlike their more fastidious American cousins, the French can be seen often plopping down on any nice, green patch of grass -sans ("without") a picnic blanket or lawn chair.  People in Paris also rarely take children out to full-service restaurants until they are teens and have learned proper public manners.  This is one of those French customs I heartily wish would make its way across the Atlantic!  Instead of taking children to restaurants, I often watched French families spread out an array of plastic cartons, bottles, breads, and cheeses for picnics with children, parents and grandparents.  The children would eat and run around.  The adults chatted over wine.  It looked a lot more fun than taking a bunch of six-year-olds to a restaurant and try to enjoy the meal while the kids impatiently sat chained to their chairs.  

Still, American that I am, I couldn't bring myself usually to sit on the ground.  Fortunately, most of the larger French parks have free, metal chairs to enjoy for your sit in the park.  These green chairs come sometimes built in a reclining position like Adirondack chairs and thus are perfect for reading or nodding off in a sunny spot.

If you don't want to sit in the sun, the Luxembourg Gardens features small forests of uniform trees providing a canopy for the perfect shaded picnic.  On the other extreme, the south end of the gardens features a big square of grass upon which it is not uncommon on sunny, summer days to see hundreds of Parisians sunbathing...on the grass...without a blanket...and inches from each other. 

Treat yourself to a picnic with an excellent baguette ("a long stick of bread") and delicious cheese like a Camembert. 

Some History:  The Jardin du Luxembourg began in 1611 when Queen Marie de Medici -yes of those Medicis- bought the area and began building the Luxembourg Palace.  Queen Marie, the wife of France's popular Henry IV, was a native of Florence and Florentine architecture and gardens inspired the Luxembourg Gardens.  Through time and the fall of France's various monarchies, the gardens became Paris' second largest public park and the official garden of the French Senate which meets in the Luxembourg Palace.