Wednesday: Day Four

We went to the botanical gardens, one of the largest of its kind in the world! So many beautiful flowers and interesting and not-so-interesting plants and trees…
This is Matt being silly and observing the trees and bushes BEFORE entering the botanical gardens...








And, finally, I have to include the following photo shoot, if only to have you understand what I have to put up with. The pictures speak for themselves.





Part of the gardens was dedicated to medicinal and poisonous plants & flowers, so that was cool. Caution: don’t chew on rhubarb or lily of the valley leaves. They are poisonous!


Again, thanks to the brilliant Canadian signage, we got lost—yes, inside the gardens... Somewhere in the tree area... Also, there was a tree house museum that had a lot of information about forests and how important and useful trees are to our health and our daily life. Before I go on, I must give you a picture of what it looks like when Rebekah and Matthew go to a museum: Rebekah’s interest in the floor and the ceiling suddenly grows, while her interest in what the tour guide has to say plummets. Her philosophy could be summarized as “seen one rock you’ve seen them all,” and “1630, 1830, aren’t they more or less the same thing?” In any case, many of the other patrons at the museums seemed impressed by her power-walking form, unbeknownst to them she had come to see the expositions, not to exercise. HEY! What can I say? I like to see the objects or animals, not read about them in great detail… As for Matthew, you’ll always find him 30 yards behind you, still reading and taking notes on the first panels he finds. And then, at the end of the day, he’ll pull out his notebook and ask “OK, now what do you remember about the blah-blah-blah tree? How do you know how old it is?” Hey, I thought school was out!!
So, getting back to my story, we went into the tree house where there were lots of panels and things to read, so Matt was scribbling like mad when a young and pretty, tree-hugger employee runs up to him (I saw her from a distance—hurrying to him!) to ask him if he was studying trees in school or something… Whatever she was saying, she was FLIRTING with him!! My jaw just dropped, so I calmly walked toward them; Matt was trying to explain that he always took notes and that there were some trees in our cemetery he couldn’t identify (whatever!), so she was delighted to help him, and lured him over to her desk. They started “tu-toying” each other and Matt was wondering if she would invite him over to her tree house… When I reached them, I planted myself right next to my husband, smiling and giving her “the look”.

Part of the botanical gardens was an insectarium. THAT was awesome and frightening all at once. Here are pictures to prove my point:
Here's Matt looking through "fly eyes". (see the notebook?!?)

Some beatles are used as jewerly...


Does anyone have a mothball??



Don't let the bedbugs bite...

World's smallest beatle (bottom right).

World's biggest tarantula. EEEEKK!!!


For dinner, we wandered back to the Quartier Latin and had dinner at “Le Petit Etranger” which was famous for its “rostbif au jus”. We ate on the terrace so we had a great view of all the people walking by. Matt had gratin (potato and cheese casserole) and Rebekah had veggie paninis.



That day, we also started a point system. There were tense times in our week where one person thought he was right when really SHE was right… she didn’t say anything, but rather waited for him to figure out he was wrong. Well, sometimes, and only sometimes, it was the other way around where HE was right after all… So, we started keeping points that day.
Rebekah’s first point came that morning when Matthew thought it would be a good idea to cut through the grass “because I think the entrance is over here” but Rebekah said, “I’d rather stay on the road”. It’s a good thing Matt went along with Rebekah’s hunch because we would’ve gone in a completely different direction, and no sooner than 30 yards on the road did we see the entrance. HA!