Day 32: Glass, Plantes, Meh

Maybe I was expecting too much. Granted, it probably wasn't reasonable to expect a fifteen story, rainbow colored dome made from one solid piece of blown glass, but when someone says glass cathedral I think glass cathedral. And I'm certainly not saying that St. Chapelle isn't impressive, but it's also not a skin-peeling mud bath in the technicolor dream spa of the sun god Ra.

I fucking hate lines

Worst still that it's literally the first thing in Paris that I've had to wait in line for. I thought everyone was supposed to be on vacation. This was supposed to be like that episode of South Park where Cartman buys his own amusement park and gets to ride all the rides without any wait, except without any consequences or hemorrhoids.

This statue thinks I should be impressed. I'm not.

The light was so beautiful this lady had to plug her ears.

Leaving the cathedral of St. Chapelle the underwhelming, I decided to go on a walk along the Seine to the Jardin des Plantes. We are now officially dealing with the Latin Quarter, which is deliberately the worst place in all of Paris. Of course, I should be careful how I frame my attack on this all-too-well-known neighborhood. First of all here I am, a tourist, in the Latin Quarter, complaining about there being too many tourists in the Latin Quarter. More importantly, Paris is the most touristed city in the world. Huge swaths of Paris--the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Jardin de Luxembourg, Canal St. Martin, the Opera, the Pompidou Center, etc.--are perennially coated with tourists. But here I draw an important distinction: these parts of Paris are filled with tourists because they are beautiful. They underscore the best qualities of the tourist, his energy, his curiosity, his drive. The Latin Quarter, on the other hand, is filled with tourists because it's been designed from the ground up to fulfill all of the tourist's deepest, darkest, filthiest needs. Weary from too many walking tours, photographs and foreign expressions, the tourist forgets himself. He forgets that he is visiting someone's home, he forgets his self-respect and his decorum, and he says to himself, "Where can I get drunk and eat something fried? Where can I buy one of those funny hats and do a loud, drunken rendition of an anachronistic French stereotype?" The answer, of course, is the Latin Quarter. Fortunately, I went during the day, at which point the neighborhood is quieter and, for the most part, bearable. I managed to avoid any obnoxious tourists while finding some cool sounds, including a steed-drum music box that played the chorus from Thriller. Awesome.

Rue St. Severin, in the Latin Quarter

I don't know that many people go to the Jardin des Plantes. It could be that I simply had never heard of it any so I'm assuming no one else had, or that most people are on vacation, but every time I've been the park seems less full that it should be. Which is too bad, because the Jardin des Plantes is lovely.

It also has an amazing greenhouse, for whatever reason, with a giant ass collection of exotic plants from all over the world. If you do make it to the Jardin des Plantes I highly recommend shelling out the six euro for a full price ticket.

That last one is an extinct species of mouse-eating, carnivorous plant.