A pug is sitting at my feet looking up at me with pitiful eyes, hoping for a crumb of my iced lemon pound cake. The coffee shop is painted a soft green. A long cushioned bench upholstered in floral fabric lines the wall. The front window is framed by cascades of lilac and jasmine. In the back of the café is a flower shop. Two women chat in French as they strip leaves from stems under a ceiling of skylights. A sign on the wall above them says La Fleuriste. The espresso machine whirs. A demitasse spoon tinks in an espresso cup. A florist pours water into a pail and I hear it trickle like a faucet.
-June 11, 2025, Paris
Romantic is a soft, gauzy feeling. It is a blush, a glow. The ruffle of a petal or a skirt. It is the fall of light. It is the rush of love, the hope to create beauty, the glimmering of an ideal. Romantic cherishes what could be and softly, gently, attempts to make it real. In the attempt, it succeeds, if only for a moment.
I am prone to romanticizing. In my younger years, this romanticism could be painful. I wanted romance to last, whether the romance was that fluttery feeling of first being in love or the glowy feeling the golden glimmer of evening light gave. In my adult years, the ephemerality is part of its allure. Romance is special when it shows up.
When I was younger, I also could not square that romance could live alongside truths with harsher colors and harder lines — if the hard realities existed, and romance faded, then my romantic notions must be false. Boy was that a depressing thought. Now I know that life is made of both romance and the not so romantic, and that the hard elements make the romantic — which is just as real — that much more sublime.
I savor the romantic when I’m lucky enough to experience it: the moment will likely be fleeting. Our days in France were full of romantic moments, including these on my final day alone in Paris, from the fall of light in St. Sulpice cathedral, to the soft floral shelter of Cordelia’s Coffee Flower Shop, to the bright blue door of the apartment where Hemingway wrote words that made me want to visit Paris, to the masterful impressions of mood and light in paintings at the Musée d’Orsay.
Light in St. SulpiceCordelia’s Coffee Flower ShopI love the wind and the light in these sketches of Woman with a Parasol by MonetAnna Boch, CuilletteDetail from Henri-Edmond Cross’s Flight of the NymphsSo sad. Doctor Paul Gachet by Vincent Van Gogh.Portrait of the Artist, Vincent Van GoghThe Siesta, Van Gogh74 Rue du Cardinal LimoineErnest and Hadley Hemingway lived on the 3rd floor above the blue door. Hemingway wrote about this apartment in A Moveable Feast, which introduced me to the romance of Paris, and he lived here when he started writing about the Lost Generation in The Sun Also Rises.
We stopped in the bakery directly across the street from our apartment to get a pastry. The line was out the door. The boulangerie smelled of warm golden crusts. They had great hunks of brown bread that they sliced slabs off of for people to purchase by the kilogram. Next to the line was a plexiglass partition where you could watch the industrial sized mixers with bowls the size of washtubs. I watched a great vat of dough be kneaded next to me. Round and round the paddle went. The baker, a young man in a flour-dusted navy blue apron and backwards baseball cap sipped coffee from a metal insulated cup covered with floury fingerprints.
– June 5, 2025
I felt relaxed in Brussels. Excellent beer abounded, and every meal came with frits (fries). On our first night, I ordered a Grimbergern Brune beer to go with my “typical” Belgian meal of Flemish beef stew which was made with Grimbergern Brune. I really wanted frits (fries) — I’d been wanting them since we’d gone to Lille two days earlier — and when I asked our server if the stew would come with frits, he said, “Everything comes with frits.”
Hell yeah!
I took one bite of the beef stew, and it transported me instantly back to childhood, to Mom’s beef stew on a winter night, leaning over our bowls around the family table. The stew in Brussels was rich and layered and velvety and hearty, especially on chilly wet night, with wind blowing and rain lashing us as we walked glistening cobbles. I sopped up the thick broth with my frits, which were golden crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, and perfectly salted. It was so good, I had an almost identical meal at a different restaurant on our second night, except this time the stew was made with Chimay Bleue, and so I ordered a Chimay Bleue to go with it. The quality was even higher than the first night’s meal, the beef tender and the broth dark and rich.
Brussels reminded me of Athens, Georgia, where I went to college, except Brussels is much bigger, speaks French, Dutch, and English, and is full of adults instead of college students. Brussels felt like Athens in that it’s edgy, kind of punk rock, and it feels like it would have a good music scene. On one of our walks around the city, my husband and I happened on a doorway with a sign over it that said La Porte Noir, The Black Door, with a brick stairwell that spiraled underground.
We of course investigated. We found ourselves in a dungeon-like bar with a bunch of unknown-to-us beers on tap. I asked the bartender for a recommendation for a dark beer. He said Lupulus Hibernatus. I said yes. The logo is a wolf passed out on on its back, pouring the last drop of beer in its mouth.
Our son loved Belgium. In his 2 days there, he ate waffles on four separate occasions. As soon as we dropped our stuff at our Airbnb, we found a cool coffee place nearby that serves waffles as a side to savory brunch in the same way we serve toast in the US. The brunch waffles came with spreads — some savory, some sweet — rather than syrup. A few hours later, he got a second waffle, this one covered in Nutella, banana, strawberries, and chantilly cream. He got it at one of the scores of waffle places near the Grand Place central square. In every direction just off the square, every other door you walked by smelled like waffles and had their own spin on toppings or presentation.
As with Paris and Lille, we walked and walked and walked. I felt like I was going to walk holes through the soles of the cheap white sneakers I bought for the trip. I got tired of carrying stuff after a while. Walking around Brussels, and on our day trip to Bruges, I didn’t take my camera, just my phone. I didn’t feel like carrying my backpack all day long, and my tote was already full with an umbrella, notebook, ereader, and sometimes sweater. So my photos aren’t as crisp or high quality as I’d have liked, which is a bummer, but.
But the Fritbar made up for it.
In Bruges, we walked a lot, and we stopped a lot for snacks. Our son wanted another waffle, which he got — this time with strawberries — and after that, he wanted a salty snack. He wanted frits.
Lucky for us, there was a place whose entire menu was frits, sauces, and beer: Fritbar. Our server was a lively, funny man with a German accent who was very involved in our orders. I ordered a dark beer on draft, and he said, “Oh, I have something even better for you, it will make you fly somewhere you’ve never been before.”
Of course I said yes. Bring me whatever you recommend. Our son said, One for me too, please. When he brought the beers, Straffe Hendrik Quadruple, our server poured them into the goblets tableside. He started with the bottle touching the glass’s rim, then lifted the bottle in the air to create a long stream from the bottle to the glass, swirling the goblet as he poured to build up the perfect head which was probably 2 inches thick.
The beer was strong, dark, and hearty, and I loved it. Our server kept stopping by our table to check on me, his eyes twinkly with mirth, telling my husband and son to watch and wait. The beer did feel wonderful, and I smiled at the fun the server was having, but I thought, he’s making a bigger deal than this is going to be. Then it snuck up on me, in the same way the anise drink did in Istanbul, where suddenly I felt high as a kite, and thought thank god I don’t have to drive anywhere because I would be incapable, and I might not even be capable of walking, and I laughed until my eyes watered, and my son and husband laughed, and our table was joyous, and our server stopped by and got a huge kick out of it all. I probably made his whole shift. Then, just like the anise drink in Istanbul, after about 5 minutes the high mellowed, and I just felt happy and content and soft around the edges.
As we drank our foamy delicious beer and dipped our perfectly fried and seasoned potatoes (I got sweet potatoes) into various sauces (our son and I got truffle mayo), I thought, why has nothing like this taken off in the US? It seems like everything we love best. All this place served was French fries, sauces, and beer*. I can’t believe every college town in America doesn’t have a Fritbar.
*I realized later that they also serve burgers and other stuff.
Our son loved walking in the rain on the cobbled streets of Brussels, and he loved the architecture in the central square. He saw it in the day and requested to go back after dark. He wanted to see the buildings lit up and the lights shining on the wet cobbles against the darkness of night.
Brussels Grand Place
I personally loved the Justice palace and the ferris wheel.
Palais de Justice, Brussels
My husband, son, and I took the train to Bruges, where we walked among canals with greenery tumbling over brick and stone walls, ornate cathedrals, bicycles with baskets and teenagers riding double on the cobblestones, and bike bells gently dinging to ask all the tourists to please make way. We ambled without aim, just turning down streets when they looked cute, or pointing ourselves towards tall spires.
Do you have weird things in your memory that stand out from childhood, things that you’re not sure why you retained those particular bits of information? I have very specific words I remember from art lessons way back in elementary school, like the different types of columns (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), like the names Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci, Sistine Chapel and Venus de Milo. Of course I know all these words in my adult life, but I specifically remember that as a child, the words and the images they conjured made me feel some kind of good way, maybe one of my first experiences of feeling awe that those people and those pieces of art existed. They seemed too good to be true, like they couldn’t be real, or at least were totally unreachable to me on the other side of the world. I didn’t conceive that I’d actually be able to ever see any of them myself.
One of the things that has always stuck in my mind from those lessons is bas relief. I don’t know why it stands out to me (har har), but the term has always been there in my brain. I did not feel awe about bas relief when I learned about it because I did not understand why it was important. Maybe that lack of understanding is why the term stuck: if they were teaching us about it alongside Michelangelo and Da Vinci, then it must be special. I assume I’d never seen a compelling example of bas relief, or I’d only seen one represented in two dimensions in the pages of a book, and I just didn’t get it. For 40 years, or however long it’s been since I learned about it, I did not get it.
Now I do. In a little hallway, in what I might have thought was a throwaway room in a dark passageway from one gallery to another, Lille’s art museum has a marble bas relief from 1435 that took my breath away: Donatello’s Feast of Herod.
It turns out, at least with this particular bas relief, and I assume with others as well, that light, once again, is everything.
The Feast of Herod hung alone on a dark wall with tiny hidden light sources in an arc around and above it. The default lighting lit the surface of the carving from the sides and top — not from out in front, which would flatten the image — so that the shallow lighting shone across the carved marble to highlight raised elements, and so that the recessed portions fell into shadow. This created a sense of depth, an illusion that the hallways and recesses in the carving disappeared into the museum wall. They looked inches deep, like I could stick my finger into one of the arches. But those dark halls are only a few millimeters behind the foreground. The entire carving is less than one centimeter deep.
A plaque next to the carved marble slab invites you to press a button. When we pressed it, the light faded to dark, then began to illuminate one side, then the top, then the other side, so that you can see how the image changes depending on where the light falls. Perhaps this lighting replicated how it would appear as the sun rose and fell on it throughout the day wherever it was originally displayed.
Donatello, Feast of Herod
I didn’t get a photo in flat light to show the difference, but you can click here to see one on the museum’s web site if you’re interested. It looks completely different from the image above. The front-lit image on the museum’s website was likely the kind of photograph I saw when I first learned about bas relief and didn’t understand why it was a special kind of sculpture.
When I saw the lighting reveal the magnificence of Donatello’s creation, it blew my mind. How did he and all these other artists figure out the mathematics and perspective to create masterpieces like this? And not only figure out the math, but conceive of the idea to begin with — to create depth in something shallow — and then plan, calculate, and execute it. It’s just unbelievable. I can’t believe it. Except I have to believe it because I saw it.
Spirituality is important to me. Not spirituality in the sense of going to church or worshipping capital G God, though being in a church can sometimes make me feel the connection I seek, to a oneness vaster than me or humanity or earth. When I say spirituality is important to me, I mean that I place a lot of value on tapping into that connection with oneness.
The times I feel spiritual, when I feel that connection, most frequently happen when I am in the presence of great beauty or excellence. Sometimes that’s through food. Sometimes it’s through art, literature, poetry, cinema, humor. Sometimes it’s something in nature, like the wind in the trees or wavelets sighing on sand. Sometimes it’s in the wonder of mathematics and physics and engineering. Sometimes it is a person’s goodness.
When I’m lucky enough to tap into that connection, I feel awe and wonder and humility and euphoria. I feel the universe in the cavity of my chest, which has become vast in its presence, and I believe that the universe is in all of us. When I feel that connection, I know everything is going to be okay, even if only on the time scale of the oneness.
I felt this when I saw Donatello’s Feast of Herod.
Though it was the most staggering, Donatello’s bas relief was not the only one of the day’s delights that fed my spirit. I also loved the paintings that showed everyday people doing everyday things in their everyday settings, like Therese peeling potatoes, like Durant’s man sleeping, like a funny still life of crêpes and waffles and rolls.Below are photos of some of my other favorite works from our day at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille and La Piscine in Roubaix.
La Maison de Therese, SaloméL’Homme Endormi, DurantNature morte aux crêpes, gaufres et cougnole, Francken
I was moved by a marble sculpture of a pieta (another word I remember from art lessons). From across the room I thought it was a sculpture draped in a fabric cloth. I wondered why it was covered, so walked over to see. When I got closer, I realized the cloth is made of stone.
The Architecture of Empathy, John Isaacs
I loved the dramatic lighting on the plaster Satyr and Bacchante. The light was even better than what we saw at the Louvre, though the sculpture itself wasn’t quite as fine.
Satyr and Bacchante, James PradierLa Piscine in Roubaix
Vanilla painted brick walls rise up on all sides of me, with red doors to each apartment and red frames to the windows. The walls create a little grotto that is insulated from the sound of cars and mopeds and rattly strollers and suitcases on the cobbles outside the front window of the apartment. Instead, I only hear the pleasant tinkling of outdoor diners’ wine glasses and cutlery.
-June 2, 2025, Lille
We arrived safely in Lille on a train from Paris. Trains run frequently between the cities and the ride is a smidge over an hour, so it’s not hard to get back and forth. This was good for me to know — maybe I could go back to Paris after my husband and son left and I would be on my own in Lille.
Vieux Lille, the historic district we stayed in, is charming with different architecture from Paris. The apartment units are narrow, more like row houses, and the cobbled streets are smaller and narrower, too. Maybe the architecture is more Belgian-style — Lille is practically on the border and was once a part of Belgium — or maybe it’s just a smaller city.
Airbnb in Lille from the back, from the quiet of the Cathedral grounds
It is much calmer in Lille, and quieter and easier than Paris. In our immediate vicinity were a pasteis de nata patisserie called Dona Bica and a café we could see from our open window; a chocolatier and macaron shop a couple of doors down; a cheese shop and multiple boulangeries, beer gardens and waffles, a crêperie and a Cathedral all within a 2 minute walk; and the Grand Place central square and plenty of shopping for shoes, clothes, food, and wine within a 5 minute walk.
Views from our window
We all needed some alone time once we arrived in Lille. I went upstairs to unpack, and when I came back down, I found my husband asleep on the couch in the living room with his book on his chest. Our son retreated to his room for some quiet time as well. The washing machine tumbled round and round.
I took a snack and a glass of the Anjou wine to the little wooden table on the terrace. The wine was cold and crisp, though I did not need a cold crisp wine that day. The air was cool enough that I wore a sweater with my white peasant skirt. My toes were chilly but I liked the feel of the wood planks under my bare feet.
The terrace we shared with other apartments was filled with pots of red and white geraniums, purple salvia, pink and yellow petunias, bamboo and ivy. As I sipped my wine and wrote, I heard the gentle sound of a neighbor washing up the dishes in the kitchen sink after dinner: the clink of glasses, the rush of water from a faucet, hands dipping in and out of the stream. Silverware clinked together as they rinsed. Church bells chimed.
I liked it there in that little nook. I need quiet time with pen and paper to take care of myself. Bread and brie, flowers and wine, church bells don’t hurt, either.
I considered trying to see the Mona Lisa, but I got panicky in the crowds. I was in a great hall, a huge red room with paintings bigger than our living room walls, one row at eye-level part of the wall where one might hang a painting, and then another row stacked above so that you had to crane your neck to see them. I hardly looked. I felt suffocated by the swarming mass of people.
I escaped to a part of the Louvre in the Denon wing that preserved the ceiling to show off what the palace had looked like when it was a palace, and that was spectacular, and there was nobody in there, which was nice, but the clock was ticking and I felt pressure to move on and understand the building so I could see more, hopefully with fewer crowds, in the 1 hour and 40 minutes I had left.
-Monday June 2, 2025
Before we left for Paris, friends who’d been told me, “If you go to the Louvre, be sure you go with a plan! Otherwise you will be overwhelmed. Do not expect to see all of it.”
By the time we’d sorted out amongst our family when we were going to do what in Paris, and we’d agreed to go to the Louvre on Sunday while our daughter was with us, there were no tickets left on Saturday or Sunday. The only reservations available were on our last day, Monday, after our daughter had left, at 4pm. Two hours before the museum closed for the day at 6pm. I grabbed three tickets before we lost that option as well. Our daughter could come back to Paris from Lille, but this was our only chance.
I studied the maps of the Louvre before we went and decided I’d focus on sculptures. Typically in the US I visit paintings when we go to art museums. This would be my opportunity to see art I can’t see at home. The Louvre contained names that seemed magical and unreachable and so far away when I learned them in childhood, when I heard them in every art class I’ve ever taken: Michelangelo, Venus de Milo.
Venus de Milo, ~100BCEMichelangelo’s Rebellious Slave, ~1515
Despite looking at maps of galleries ahead of time and trying to plan my strategy, I was totally overwhelmed once I was in the lobby under the glass pyramid of the museum. My husband, son, and I had decided to split up since we had so little time. Even with a map, I could never tell what level I was on or where I was going. With all the people and half stairwells, it was nearly impossible to get my bearings.
And then I would stumble into a hall of magnificent art.
I saw Michelangelo’s Rebellious Slave and Dying Slave, the Venus de Milo, The Three Graces, FlyingMercury by Giambologna. I saw lovers loving. I saw heroes conquering. I saw ancient goddesses radiate feminine strength and glory. I saw Greek marble carved 1800 to 2100 years ago.
I loved being able walk a complete circle around the sculptures to see them from every angle. I loved the way they were placed in the galleries such that natural light from the palace’s windows shone on them. Light is everything. It makes the stone glow. It highlights lines and curves, creates shadows and depth. With a painting, the light and colors and textures are mostly complete and laid on a flat surface by the artist; with a camera in hand, the best you can hope for is to capture the artwork accurately. With a sculpture, you can photograph it from different angles to change the composition of your photograph, and with different light to change the mood. You can extend the art and make additional art of it (not me, but great photographers could!).
Antonio Canova, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, ~1790
I saw Aphrodites and Venuses, Athena, and the incredible detail of the Caryatid columns from a Renaissance French palace. I saw the beauty of the human body glorified in marble and bronze, the ideal image of the human for these artists and their times, every woman’s and goddess’s breasts the exact same size and shape, every man’s and god’s chest, abs, and biceps muscular and hard and strong. The supermodel has been around for much longer than I realized.
In the sculptures that most captivated me, the marble was so smooth, it looked supple like skin. I snapped a photograph that I intended to capture the exterior of the building from inside the Louvre. When I looked at it after the trip, I thought, “Why is there a naked person in my photograph?” It is not a naked person. It’s a sculpture. That’s how fine the artistry is.
Stone that looks like skin
I was stunned by how perfect these sculptures were, in their shapes and proportions, their grace and details, their smoothness. I could not stop thinking about how mind-numbingly tedious it must have been to work so closely, so precisely, to chip away at the hard stone and make these human forms and ornate textures come out of it. The artists’ patience to suffer that tedium, and their persistence to push through it, resulted in something real, something permanent, something that lasts for all of humanity to experience. This is true of all artists — musicians, writers, painters, sculptors. I am grateful for their patience. I am grateful for their drive and tenacity and madness to make the millions of tiny choices, the millions of tiny marks, that create such wonder that we can still appreciate and enjoy 1 year or 2100 years later.
Caryatid column in Renaissance palace, ~1550
The craftsmanship was impeccable. Other sculptures look rough and crude now after seeing these perfect specimens.
A perfect foot
After spending time with these masterpieces, I still had about an hour left. Looking at a map afterward, I now see that I was on the level underneath the great galleries of paintings, including the Mona Lisa gallery, which was why each time I tried to climb the stairs to explore other areas, I met huge crowds. I could not figure out how to get out of the wing I was in to get away from the masses. I stumbled on an underground passage where you could walk through the Medieval foundations of the Louvre. It was refreshingly cool and empty down there, underground, with those ancient stone walls all around.
I finally found my way out of the Denon wing, which is where the Da Vinci paintings are — one name whose work I did not see — and where the largest crowds were. I exited and went to the Richelieu wing where I had originally intended to go, and where I rescanned my ticket for entrance.
I entered and wandered into the passage on the right. I emerged in a beautiful atrium filled with natural light from a high glass ceiling.
Richelieu Wing, Puget Court
I was surrounded by huge marble sculptures of gods and myths, and there were trees and light, and there were people but not crowds, and there was sunlight and lots of air, and it was glorious. I stood in the entry and felt the sunlight and the clean, open space recharge me. When I climbed the stairs, I was confronted with a spectacular sculpture catching sunbeams.
Pierre Puget, Perseus and Andromeda, 1684; ~5:10pm on June 1
The top of the stairs opened into a gallery streaming with light and that overlooked a serene indoor courtyard. The green of the trees was lovely against the white and cream stone, and it picked up the green of the bronze sculptures, creating a sense of harmony between these natural living beings and the human-made creations around them.
Richelieu Wing, Puget Court
I stood and watched people interact with the sculptures, looking up at them, photographing or having their photograph taken with them, like the goofy grinning man who had his picture made with the bronze Hercules conquering a serpent, as if he, too, could conquer such a beast.
Hercules Fighting Achelous Transformed into a SnakeTheseus fighting the Minotaur
I spent the rest of my time at the Louvre in this hall. I can’t get enough of this place. Of Paris, of the art, of France. I want to come back.
I’ve found a place in the shade in Luxembourg Gardens to sit and rest my feet. A cool green breeze blows. I hear birds twittering and wind in the leaves, and the air smells fresh and crisp. My eyes are soothed by the curves of the garden paths, the trees and flowers and sculptures, the people reclining in park chairs reading books with their feet up. I hear the crunch of feet on the gravel and sand path, and pigeons bob their heads in the dappled shade from the trees above me. Are these the horse chestnuts?
-Sunday June 1, 2025
Brian and I walked the empty city this morning, picking our way through the wreckage of last night’s Champions League win while cleanup crews swept loose garbage into piles to be hoovered by the mechanized street sweepers. Crews had already gotten to some streets, and those were pristine; other sidewalks barely had empty spots to put our feet without stepping on trash. Our destination was Notre Dame. We wanted to see it without the massive crowds. We didn’t go inside, the lines were too long even early in the morning, but the grounds weren’t crowded when we got there, the streets around it were clean, and we were able to spend some time with the cathedral, spellbound and in awe of the intricacy of it.
Notre Dame in the early morning
We went back to the apartment after our walk, and then I was ready for my One Thing in Paris: Jardin du Luxembourg.
I’m so happy here. The bird song and ivy air feel cleansing after the garbage water stench of the city on a hot day yesterday, the endless honking and emergency vehicles last night, and the streets littered with bottles, food wrappers, and cigarette butts this morning.
This garden is less about the flower beds and more about green spaces with sculptures and shade and wide paths to stroll on or sit beside. The sculptures are part of the garden, with greenery all around them. Sometimes they’re in a grassy area with a bed around them, sometimes they’re against the backdrop of a tree or shrubbery, sometimes they’re nestled in the green themselves, like a bust I saw peeking out a few minutes ago.
My husband and daughter stayed back at our Airbnb, but our son came with me to the garden. He wanted a quiet place to sit and read his book; he found a serene spot in the shade. I left him by the Medici fountain and will return to him soon.
Medici fountain: a nice spot to sit and read. Or eat. Or watch birds. Or really do anything.
I’m in a shady spot by the stag sculpture. In front of me under a tree, a silver haired gentleman leans his chair back and looks at his phone. He wears dark fitted jeans, brown loafers, a fitted grey lightweight crewneck sweater over a faded navy polo. To my right, two women sit side by side in the park’s green metal chairs under another tree. They turned their chairs to face a small flower bed filled with purple petunias, white begonias, and red geraniums. They chat in French. One wears a scarf around her neck. They laugh. The one on the left tells a story and reaches her right hand out to tap her friends elbow with the back of her hand, like can you believe that? A dapper white-haired man in a jaunty flat cap and a blue shirt with white polka dots just walked haltingly by; he looks like he might need a cane, but that doesn’t stop him from strolling in this tranquil green space.
There are chairs everywhere in this garden. You can sit in the shade along any of the garden paths. You can sit in the sun along the mall that leads up to the palace. You can sit in dappled shade seats around the stage pavilion where a jazz band currently plays. You can sit along the pool of the Medici fountain, surrounded by swags of ivy vines and shaded by giant maples that rose ringed parakeets swoop in and out of. You can picnic on the grassy expanses between the rows of horse chestnut trees.
A nice place to picnicSo many places to sit and enjoy the gardens
I’ve moved from my seat by the stag to a seat by my son. I’m shocked that there are empty chairs, this is such a perfect spot. The fountain splishes and music from the pavilion drifts on the air. The soundscape is soothing: water tinkling, sweet toddler voices and dad murmers, the crinkle of a wax paper sandwich wrapper, rustling leaves, a bird saying “whit whit.” People sit alongside the fountain reading, holding hands, or just gazing at it. Some eat on their laps, legs casually crossed with sandaled feet dangling.
Medici fountain
I could do this every day in retirement, come sit in this garden to read, write, watch the birds splash in the fountain, gaze at sculptures in different kinds of light, eat a crêpe or a croissant or a sandwich on a baguette, enjoy people strolling and lounging in this beautiful green space.
Butterfly Mind 