Oh Paris.

I know you're mad about me taking credit for all that warm weather, but do you really have to continue to take it out on all of us with this damp chill? Can't you get over it? For crying out loud I had to buy a jacket today. Pleather. We're cold here...

So yesterday (after two errands took over an hour) I thought we would explore Montorgueil but really it got to be too cold. We ended up eating bad pizza. We did check out St. Eustache however, and parts of Les Halles. We returned there today where I found the jacket. On sale. They are giving away winter clothes, on with the ankle cuff sandals, and as I said earlier - hold onto your hat - the blue jean shorts and black stockings. Mark my words you'll be seeing this on a college campus near you. In the evening we met friends for a drink at the CHilean bar where we want so badly for them to make better mohitos. Oh well. But we stopped at a bistro on rue des Tournelles where we felt quite welcome and cozy and had a lovely family dinner. When I feel less lazy I will find the receipt and post the name. For me, again with the duck. I can't help myself. And pears and ice cream. And Rachel discovered a charlotte. Yum. Stephen won with a seafood rissotto that was very light, almost like it was spun from the ocean air.

But today I did manage an educational moment, we returned to Jardin des Plantes and this time visited the Grand Gallery of Evolution and the special Dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum. The Jardin itself grew from the King's Garden established in 1635 by Louis XIII, while the museum was established during the Revolution. The Grand Gallery of Evolution is in a beautiful setting, a space that binds the old with the new in both architecture and ways of displaying items from the natural world. For example the old idea of cases still exists, but they are pushed to the edges of the rooms and many are shown in modernized displays of texture and composition, rendering the subjects part of an aesthetic experience. Toward the middle of each floor the space for presentation is more open and the re-creations less pedagogic. There's just something very pleasing about the whole thing. I'm not sure if we took in all the ideas that corresponded with each level. I did come up with some fabulous ideas for windows and room dividers based on bottles with blue transparencies and jellyfish in them, and also those modernized cases with butterflies. I'll have to skip the locusts at my house.

So you can see how I was tired by the time we decided that winter jackets were now a must and how I might end up with a pleather jacket wanna-be.