A Walk Through the Garden

Today, due to Veteran's day or Armistice day as it's known here, I had the day off. A few of the other assistants and I decided to talk a walk in the "Jardins des Plantes" (Plant Garden). It was a really nice botanical garden of sorts complete with a bamboo forest, stone statues and an orange grove which we couldn't get to. Below are a few pictures from the area. The first one is this weird telescope building, or so Cathy said. I thought the creepy face on it was worth posting.


Here is the group that went. From the left: Cathy, Dela, Junko, Dawn and Aleksey.


Below, it a very amazing tree. Not only does it look cool because of all the knots, as you might be able to see in the picture, but there are bits of paper with wishes and secrets stuffed in there. It's nicknamed the Love-Wish Tree, we found out. We, guiltily, read some of the pieces of paper stuffed in there. They said things like "I wish I had someone" or "I wish I would stop wanting more and be happy with what I have." It was very romantic and a little sad.
After our long walk in the park, we were walking back to downtown for some coffee and crepes, and we unwittingly ran into a homeless guy pooping in the park. Unfortunately, I saw him just as he was pulling up his stripped undies. I thought everyone would want to share in this ridiculous experience. Oh, and speaking of poo, we also ran into human poo at the garden on one of the paths. This poo was complete with toilet paper. It guess it was just that kind of day today.

Unfortunately, the crepes were pretty disappointing and we won't be returning to that creperie (restaurant that specializes in crepes). They were very chintzy on their fillings and we all felt like we got a little screwed on our crepe experience. Thankfully, Montpellier is full of creperies, so we can continue the search for a favorite.

I leave you with this really ridiculous mannequin with the purple, lacy, mesh underwear. This was on display in one of the higher-end department stores and I HAD to take a picture. I figured my gay friends would appreciate the sexiness of these undies but I just laughed at how lacy and see-through they were. How can you respect a man wearing these? :) However, if you put it into perspective, women wear much more scandalous underwear, so why wouldn't men have the same?