Photograph by Mike Kirwan

Ah, springtime in Paris…

Paris comes alive in the spring, a time when the city thaws out from the doldrums of gray winters.

Parisian boutiques roll out daring new designs, restaurants update their menus to include fresh legumes ripe for the season, and locals trade in their husky scarves for leaner neck wraps.

We’ve already told you about UNESCO’s secret Paris garden. While Paris itself goes through a bit of a rebirth, so too do the city’s parks, and none more so than the Parc Floral de Paris. Contained within the enormous Bois de Vincennes, the Parc Floral de Paris is a vast aggregation of 3000 manicured plant varieties set around a tranquil, artificial lake. Best of all, visitors can literally enmesh themselves amongst the flowers on small grass pathways that maze through the Versailles-worthy gardens. Homemade picnics are encouraged. The park’s amphitheater hosts a wide array of events all year, including the annual jazz festival.

The Parc Floral de Paris is a world class botanical garden and perhaps one of the city’s best kept secrets. Aside from the summer’s jazz festival the park doesn’t attract wide swaths of tourists. Their absence makes for a nice respite from the hoards of springtime visitors throughout the center of the city.

Popularity: 3% [?]

photograph courtesy of weyerdk

Springtime in Paris equals the outdoors—lingering in the outdoor markets, lazing away the afternoon at a cafe, or finding a park bench in the sun. The city teems with legendary public gardens like the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Tuileries, and the Jardin des Plantes, but there are also lots of secret garden hideaways worth tracking down for those days when you feel like being alone.

One of the these is the Garden of Peace at UNESCO headquarters in the 7th arrondissement. Landscaped in 1958 by Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, it is a serene composition of flowering cherry trees, plum trees, magnolias, bamboo, rocks, and water—all representing the harmony between nature and mankind. Admission to the garden is free.

To visit UNESCO, go to the reception desk and exchange some form of identification for a visitor’s pass. To register for a guided tour of the building and its art collection—which includes works by Calder, Giacometti, Le Corbusier and Miró—contact the visitor’s center through m.tucker@unesco.org.

Also worth a visit is UNESCO’s basement library, which has a good English language press section, including the IHT, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s.

UNESCO is located at 7 place de Fontenoy. Metro: Ségur or Cambronne.

Popularity: 2% [?]