Today was lovely, 22° and sunny with a light breeze.  A great day for exploring and wandering about Paris.

I took the metro all the way to rue de la Grande Chaumiere which is where the life drawing sessions I want to attend are held. Turns out it is just around the corner from a metro station and it is very easy to get to, just one train all the way from the Gare de l’Est, which is about a ten minute walk from my apartment. I love the metro, it is easy and fast and offers such great people watching.  The Academie was closed so I didn’t get any more information, but I will try to attend one of their sessions soon.

I decided to walk back and see what I could see, only there is so much to see that I barely knew where to look next.

I stopped to take a picture of of some brushes in a shop window that does art restoration along Boulevard Montparnasse and then headed towards the Luxembourg Gardens.

Oops, a bit blurry.

At Place Ernest Denis I found a great fountain with horse sculptures that caught my attention.  I decided to draw, and settled down in a quiet corner, but soon the park was full of children playing after school.  They were curious but didn’t approach until one brave little boy came over to see what I was drawing.  I was then very quickly surrounded with about twenty children who wanted to see my sketch and asked questions and told me things, not all of which I understood.  One little girl very knowingly said, “ah, vous etes Anglaise”, after I said something in French.

After finishing my drawing I strolled through Luxembourg gardens, remembering the last time I was here with Bob.  We had a picnic on the grass just as so many people were doing today. Picnicking, reading, talking, playing cards, I even saw one man repeatedly lick his girlfriend’s foot!  Not something you see everyday.

Parisians love their gardens and green spaces, I can’t believe how many people are out in them everyday, and the flowers are amazing.

I stopped to visit St. Sulpice, a very grand cathedral, and there was a little white heart on the ground just outside the door that seemed very welcoming,

I am truly in a state of awe when I visit these cathedrals.  I touch the stone and wonder about all the people who have been here before me, perhaps touching this exact spot.

Then I turned around and saw this….

It was in a little side chapel called the Chapel of Holy Angels, that had three large Delacroix paintings, painted between 1855 and 1861.  Just below one of these huge paintings there was a chair, illuminated by the late afternoon sun and it felt as though, just perhaps, an angel was present.