One cool morning in Paris

My, it’s been quite a while since I last wrote my column. I’ve been abroad and only just recently returned. Thanks to friends Peter Bangayan and Joey de Castro for holding the fort for me while I was away. It’s good to be back though after that long, hectic but highly enjoyable European vacation trip.

I had three encounters with succulents during the entire trip. The first was in Milan, Italy where I saw a plant retailer located in a regular commercial building selling large specimens of astrophytum, mammillaria, gymnocalycium and notocactus. Funny thing, I saw this shop while on board our tour bus, so this was a real quickie encounter. My second run-in happened in, of all places, Lucerne, Switzerland. There was a garden center near our hotel selling, among other things, succulents. The prices were, in my book, quite hefty, which isn’t at all unusual for Europe.

I guess my most meaningful contact with any succulent during the entire trip was at the Paris Botanical Gardens, and even this contact was quite fleeting. And it also happened quite accidentally. My two younger boys, Kirby and Basti, were desperate to go to a zoo after the many days of visiting churches, historical sites and other regular tourist destinations in Europe. Mind you, they both enjoyed these various visits, but they were really looking forward to doing something for kids for a change. Ethan was perfectly fine joining us for the zoo trip, so long as he got to go to Virgin Records on the Champs Elysee later that day.

You should have seen the look on the hotel concierge’s face when I asked him where the Paris zoo was. He was incredulous! Honestly, this looked like the first time he had ever gotten a query about the zoo. After stopping for a moment to think and looking at his map, his face brightened up. "Ahhh, we have a menagerie (mini-zoo) somewhere in Paris…let me look it up for you." After giving me directions using the city’s super-efficient Metro subway system, he gave me a bit of a smile, relieved to have done his job. By the way, traveling around Paris via the Metro is just the absolute best thing. You can get to practically anywhere around the city with one Metro ticket which costs you 1.40 euros. This sure beats taking a taxi, which can literally cost you an arm and a leg, and then some!

It was quite nippy that morning when we left our hotel for the Metro station. All I had on for protection was my short-sleeved golf windbreaker, since my trusty leather coat was at the dry cleaners after a bout with some spilled soup in Switzerland, but that’s another story. I won’t ever forget my dry cleaning bill for that one coat, though, 50 euros!

When we arrived at our destination, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Paris Menagerie was by the Museum of Natural History and the Paris Botanical Gardens. But since we were pressed for time that day, we decided to skip the Natural History Museum. Anyway, I thought, we had already taken the boys to the Natural History Museum in Vienna, so we didn’t have to see the dinosaur bones and preserved animals again. I was right on this decision, though we could see from the glass windows of the Museum the magnificent reconstructed remains of what I presumed to be a Diplodocus. I saw Basti’s longing eyes and told him we would visit Paris Diplodocus next time. That seemed to do the trick.

By this time, the outside temperature was about nine to 10 degrees centigrade. But the wind was starting to blow and this made things drastically colder for me in my slinky windbreaker. As many who have lived or visited cold-clime places will quickly attest, the wind-chill factor can quickly bring temperatures to below freezing, depending on the strength and direction of the wind. It was a good thing we were at a botanical garden, so my attention quickly turned away from the cold’s discomfort to the various landscaped gardens and perfectly manicured tree-lined walkways which surrounded us.

There were nice ornamental gardens planted with lush herbs, shrubs and even various species of wild grass. Several ponds were teeming with fish and frogs. Kirby observed a frog which was croaking merrily as it expanded its lower lip into a huge bubble. He was about to capture it, but I told him not to mess around since we would not be able to take that critter back to Manila anyway. Back home, Kirby and Basti have an array of critter pets, including those they captured on various field trips.

A further stroll away, we saw a number of greenhouses, and my heart started to beat with excitement, as I realized there must be a cactus and succulent house lurking somewhere nearby. I was right. From a distance, I spied a fairly large greenhouse with huge succulent specimens inside. Unfortunately, as we got there, a dreadful realization hit me — the succulent house was closed. Rats! I did manage to see some of the plants from the outside. These were landscaped within the greenhouse and included some very large specimens of Echinocactus Grusonii (Golden Barrels), agaves, towering euphorbias, cereus and opuntias, with a sprinkling of aloes, mammillarias and a few other smaller-growing species at ground level. I managed to take a few pictures from the outside, but these turned out horribly, as the photos here attest. The greenhouse glass was hazy due to the cold air from the outside and what I presumed was the regulated warm air inside the greenhouse. Shucks, it would have been nice to be inside the greenhouse on that cold Paris morning. Oh well, maybe when the kids and I come back to see Paris Diplodocus one day, maybe we’ll have better luck with the succulents as well.

The highlight for everyone that morning was the visit to the Paris Menagerie. Quite frankly, I did not expect much after my exchange with the hotel concierge. But the mini-zoo proved to be a most welcome surprise. We saw creatures that I’d never seen in my life – alpine fauna like ibex and other mountain goats, the yak which inhabits the highland mountains in Tibet and around Nepal. We saw a Przewalski’s horse, a wild, Mongolian horse which almost became extinct many years ago but which was saved by astute conservation. The Menagerie had a nice ‘herd" of these horses, so the animal is obviously making a nice comeback into this world.

And the vivarium is one of the very best I have been to, and I have been to quite a number worldwide. We saw an excellent array of snakes, lizards, crocodilians, toads, turtles and tortoises, stick insects, beetles and tarantulas. My favorite poisonous snake of all time is the gaboon viper, a fat, beautifully marked snake with the longest fangs in the world – two inches! The only other time I encountered this snake was at the Bronx Zoo in New York. And the giant tortoises from Seychelles were another highlight for me, a whole troop of them, each weighing more than a man, with the biggest looking probably close to a ton. We even got to visit the zoo’s nursery where newborns and hatchlings are housed. These included baby birds, lizards and tortoises. All in all, a truly world-class zoo in my opinion, and a thoroughly fun time for the entire family.

So if you are ever in Paris with the kids and have some time, you have to visit the Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum and the Menagerie. These are not places that Paris is known for, but you and your family will be pleasantly surprised at what these sites have to offer. Just be prepared for the look on your hotel concierge’s face when you pop the question.