Other things in Paris, TGV, La Barraque

I promised...

So other stuff i did in Paris... I went to the Jardin des Plantes and the Menagerie (which is an infinitissimally cooler word than zoo, I think) and wandered around a bit ' the Jardin des Plantes has what i think is very undervalued in other countries such as Aus - a catalogue of the flora of a particular place, grown in each plant's respective climate. I like places like that, and I think they will become increasingly important as we lose more species to global warming...people run in there too. As a place to run it gives the bay run a run for its money...argh too many runs. Also lots of school groups being dragged around although I can't imagine they'd learn much botany in school anymore. Also the Menagerie, which is kinda small compared to the London Zoo and Taronga, but again focussed on cataloguing and conserving rather than just showing off (on a side note, something i forgot: the Aquarium at the London Zoo is the oldest of its kind, and they actually invented the word aquarium of it - a combination of the previous name for that kind of thing - aquatic vivarium. End of irrelevantness). There were awesome Orangutans at the Menagerie, and a flock of flamingois that all had their right wing half cut off. That was sad...

I spent a lot of time just walking in Paris; like many pre-car places its a very walkabke city. Their hawkers are a lot more refined than in either London or New York - thing original handpainted watercolours and handpainted snuff boxes rather than I heart NY baseball caps or British flags. Even still, they have the annoying 1euro guys - the guys in baseball caps who sell overheated water in bottles to unsuspecting tourists for '1 euro, 1 euro'. They weren't too hard to ignore after a while.

So, TGV. i went to Montparnasse train station the day before i left Paris to book my ticket, confused a very helpful train worker, and didn't get lost. Score. I caught a 8.10 train bound for Toulouse, arrived in Toulouse at around 1:30 with a stopover of about 4 hours, succeeding in both arriving on a Sunday (where there is REALLY nothing open) and about half an hour after the local markets finished. Found a Hungarian Fiorint on a chain; highlight. It looks like a relatively interesting city, though.

Anyway, continued on by bus and train to be met at Mirande by Johanna, my lovely WWOOF host (if you're wondering, she isn't reading this; she really is lovely) in her exceptional artwork of a car (think the offspring of an old 4 door sedan and a kombi the hippies painted on their day off) and taken to La Barraque. La Barraque is a very old farmhouse that is home to Johanna and her daughters Sophie, 19 and Leilani, 13. The farm is also home to Kai, a golden retriever who will nidge you until you pet her, Reglisse, a mutt with SEVERE stick issues and Ferdiez, the maltese whose left eye was taken our in a fight with another dog. Make no mistake, she's vicious. Also two cats, one of whom has an adorable balance problem, about 10 hens and a rooster, and a peacock who never gets as much attention as he wants, gets into squawking matches with the farm's human inhabitants and spents much of his time attempting to woo the chickens with his beautiful tail. Also two donkeys, two horses, about 4 cows, two calves and about 53 million slugs.

Slugs. Mmmm. They are the bane of my existence here at the farm, they are everywhere. There is a strawberry patch here; I like strawberries. Fair enough. But the slugs like them too. So every time it rains I go on slug patrol (and here in the Mid-Pyrenees, every time it rains is awfully often), nabbing buckets and buckets of the little buggers, which Johanna then kills with hot water. But they return, en masse. Anyway, will post again extremely soon (as in the next twenty minutes) with an average day at La Barraque.