The Life of a Parisian

In class and on the train ride to Paris I was thinking about all the major tourist attractions that I wanted to visit while I was there. The major sites on my list included of course the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, and Notre Dame. We visited all three of these while we were there and while they were all memorable and beautiful in their own special way, none of them were my favorite. I never would have guessed that my favorite site in Paris was a public park, the Jardin des Tuileries. Lucky for me it was located right across the street from our hotel and so the very first trip out of our hotel we found the park. First we wanted to find the Louvre so we walked farther; skipping over the park where the glass pyramids and the mammoth Louvre building was located. We then just started walking and I was like “there is so many people over here let’s see what is going on” so it was then that we found the park.

Back in Ohio where I am from, a park is used for playing games or to take little kids to play at a playground. However, in Paris this park seemed to be focused on college aged and older adults. Not only was it filled with beautiful green grass and of course it had flowers…it is called a garden, but there were green metal lawn chairs everywhere. Pretty much every seat was taken and the people sitting in the chairs looked so relaxed. It was unreal to me that so many people took the time just to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather. People came and congregated with friends over a bottle of wine and a picnic like dinner, something else that was completely foreign to me. The idea of not going out to dinner and just bringing a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine and meeting friends seemed so odd, but yet so great at the same time.

While Jonathan and I were sitting in the park thinking about how different it was that people actually take the time to sit and just chat with friends, I started thinking about the different territories that people have. In a large city like Paris, people do not have a very large private territory. Most people live in a small apartment, without a yard or an outdoor space at all. So the use of a public territory or space like a park is going to be used more. However, I have lived in an apartment before and I never really took advantage of public parks. The environment of this park just seemed completely different. You can sit in one part of the park and look at the Louvre and the glass pyramids that stand in front of it and then you can sit in another part and just sit in front of a huge fountain with statues that were created way back in the early 16^th Century. Between 1660 and 1664 the garden was designed in French formal style by Andre le Notre, the same person who designed gardens at the Versailles Palace. The Jardin des Tuileries was one of the first parks to open to the public and it quickly became a place to see and be seen. Even in the 18th century the park featured amenities such as cafes, kiosks, deck chairs and public toilets.

It is pretty cool to think that something that was started so long ago still is important to people today in Paris. I did not know about the Jardin des Tuileries before going to Paris, but after being there I would recommend taking some time to stop there and relax with friends after a long day of site seeing. Being able to be experience a couple hours at the park allowed me to have a very small idea about what living in Paris would be like, and that maybe slowing down and enjoying the scenery in life is not only not a bad thing to do, but in many European cultures it is the true key to a happy life.

Here are the links that I used to find information about the garden. They also include a lot of useful information about many other attractions in different cities as well:

http://www.aviewoncities.com/paris/tuileries.htm

http://www.parisdigest.com/takingarest/parcdestuileries.htm