Paris Journal: Kew Gardens remembered through notes & photographs

Victoria Gate to Kew Gardens

June 20, 2017

By Moristotle

[I was, of course, remiss not to include this account here shortly after our return from Paris after June 2017. I publish it today because today a couple of my friends are visiting Kew Gardens!
    And, in case you’re wondering what a visit to Kew Gardens has to do with this Paris journal, please be reminded that Carolyn and I took a four-day side trip to the British Isles last year to visit our Welsh friend Penelope Griffiths, who writes our column “Penny for Her Thoughts.”]

For our visit to Kew Gardens today, we were out of our hotel for about seven hours, catching the 65 bus [near the Hotel Xanadu in Ealing] toward Kingston at around 9:30 a.m.
    We surely walked around Walpole Park after breakfast – ah, yes, I remember now (I’m writing the next day, aboard the Eurostar train from St. Pancreas to Paris, which will pull out in about three minutes) that as we passed the bench we had sat on Monday evening to eat our take-out salads and chocolate cake rolls from Marx & Spencer’s, I noted that the sweet potato chips that had fallen out of the bag when a gust of wind blew it off the bench were still lying on the ground, despite the fact that a cleaning crew had obviously been collecting trash early (and leaving large plastic bags full of trash near the entrance to the park).
    And we saw Alfred Winiecki, the jeweler, again, with his dog, Jeannie [not mentioned yet in an entry in the Paris Journal]. I told him we would like to try to find his shop that evening, after Kew. He gave me a worn business card, no doubt the only one he was carrying.

We had taken an exploratory bus to Victoria Gate on Monday, to make sure we knew how to get to Kew Garden today (see top photo):
    After arriving about ten minutes early today, we walked around Kew ad lib until 11:15 approached:

Photo taken from front of The Botanical,
where we were booked for lunch

We were both seduced by the bark!

Fabulous!

This ancient tree seemed so alone

    At 11:15, it would be time to huddle around the reception desk in the gift shop to be among the fifteen persons taken on the day’s "Meet the Experts" tour at 11:30 (on Tuesdays only).

    Our tour guide introduced herself as Christy, a horticulturalist. She led the eight of us who showed up to the Plant Family Beds. (I was unable to find a staff entry for Christy on the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew website.)

Christy speaking to group

    On the way to the Plant Family Beds, a couple in the group made a to-do about my Mount Gay Rum cap, even joking that I might be mugged for it – did they actually say the cap was “to kill for”?! I asked what about their experience made them familiar with Mount Gay Rum. They said they were from Barbados!

The smashing couple from Barbados

    At about 12:30, Christy handed us off at the Herbarium, Library, Art & Archives building

to taxonomist Dr. Gwilym P. Lewis,

whose clear, confident, polished manner of speaking prompted me to ask him aside whether he had published articles in learned journals. He had, he said, and gave the number of them (something around 120, I think he said). I told him, “I thought I spotted a writer in the way you speak.”

    We had to skip out a few minutes before Mr. Lewis finished – our reservation for lunch at The Botanical was for 1:30, and I reviewed our culinary experience there on a ratings website:

We were greeted like friends and seated similarly, provided clear, informative menus, brought a refreshing liter of sparkling water,

Paris had rendered us fond of sparkling water
(aqua avec gasse)

and given just the right amount of leisure to make our selections, after which we washed our hands and enjoyed the decor until our asparagus and garden salads were delivered,

with bread, for us to savor prior to being regaled with perfect sea bass & risotto.

[I didn’t include the photos in my rating.]

    The food and the service were so comforting, we left sad to be leaving our “friends” and looking forward to our next repast at The Botanical.

After lunch we went out to find a seat in one of the several tour “trains” (three or four large “wagons” pulled by a small truck) that go around the entire park.

(Same as for gardens admission and lunch, Carolyn had already secured day-pass tickets for us. Though we took one complete trip, we witnessed travelers getting off or getting back on at various points on the route.)

Though we had gone on longer outings in Paris, today’s was especially exhausting – perhaps because of our cumulative tiredness, lately exacerbated by our high-stress road trips and tour of Cardiff.
    We loafed around the hotel for over an hour before going out to Kerbisher & Malt for fish & chips.

    And I had mushy peas – which were wonderful. [Carolyn had had them in Neath, Wales, but not liked them.] I ate every morsel I could fork out of their little bowl.

    We were too tired to search out Alfred Winiecki’s jewelry shop that evening, and at this moment of writing (now after 3 p.m. on June 22, in our Montmartre apartment), I am hard-pressed to remember what we did before falling into our hotel bed, which, for the record, was too low and unsupportive for either of our rickety bodies.
    The next photo does prove, though, that on our walk back from Kerbisher & Malt, Carolyn spotted a very distinctive cake in a shop window:

Copyright © 2018 by Moristotle