It was too beautiful a day to head home straight away after our visit to the Panthéon. F and I let our feet did the choosing, and found ourselves heading westward, passing École Polytechnique, walking along rue Monge before weaving past a few smaller streets to arrive at the entrance of the Jardin des Plantes. And oh, finding the Russian restaurant which we went to when we first met had now been replaced with a Portuguese canteen. That’s Paris for you: so much that’s familiar yet things change all the time.

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If you ever find yourself crossing River Seine southward at Pont d’Austerlitz, you will see this magnificent building right ahead, surrounded by a beautiful garden. When I saw it for the first time, I wondered whose grand palatial residence could it be. But this is Paris, where real estate is at its premium, so really, who could afford to live in a place like this?

Turns out, a bunch of preserved (or models of) animals and plants. Or so I am assuming since it is the site of the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution, aka the Natural History Museum of Paris, and other NHMs that I’ve been to tend to house items of similar vein. I still have not yet been there for a visit – I should – but I have been told by an ex-colleague in Dublin how wonderful this place is. Certainly, the setting from the exterior has been charming. Now it remains how captivated I would be when I venture in one day.