Poilane Bakery and Luxembourg Gardens.....what a morning..

Finally – a nice long update to the blog…..it is now 10:40AM on Saturday. We are on the TGV (trains grandes vitesse…..real fast train). So much has happened – where to begin. For starters – we missed our first/scheduled train. No need to go into all the details – suffice to say, the Montparnasse Station is really, really, really HUGE.

So, now to backtrack, a bit…..On Thursday we got up and headed out for the day. Our goals were pretty lofty: see the Mona Lisa (the Louvre Museum) and take advantage of the late/evening hours of the Musee d’Orsay (Thursdays only – they are open until 10pm – pretty cool).

First thing we headed out on the Metro (first GROUP experience on the METRO – was awesome!!!! It was just our luck that it was a holiday (feast of the Ascension) and traffic on the trains and out and about was pretty light. Made getting out and about AND around pretty smooth. First stop: Boulangerie Poilane. Many years ago I’d met the original Mr. Poilane during a visit to Paris. He and his bread impressed me so much that I just had to go back. So, I dragged the entire group to the bakery where we all grabbed some form of croissant or tart, stopped across the street at a little grocer and bought a bunch of produce. It was just a couple of blocks from an entrance to the Jardins de Luxembourg. It’s one of those amazing places that Paris is so full of…..a very unassuming entrance gate…..once passed through is pure magic. Well, sort of magical…we happened to enter through the sports park side of the gardens – so there were lots of tennis courts and such….but the vastness that was within is one of those amazing Parisian specialties. Before heading any further into the park we sat down and dove into our “breakfast”. Oh, by the way – I probably forgot to mention – all the forecasts for rain have not played out. We’ve had incredible sunshine the whole time; and this day was no exception.

As we ate our “breakfast” we watched this man and his little boy playing tennis – just volleying back and forth….right in front of our bench. There’s a picture below of the little boy – complete with a very French scarf tied around his neck…..and pretty damn good at volleying with his father. Below are some pictures the early part of our day. Bread from Poilane, the young French Andre Agassi (couldn't have been more than 4 years old), and our time in the Luxembourg Gardens......