Picnics Indigo

Last seven days - yikes. There is still some final research to do, people to see and places we want to visit - where has the time gone?
We had arranged to meet Maité at the Jardin des Plantes for a review of the research and decided that a picnic would be much nicer than an office meeting. Marcia prepared the food (we would pick up a baguette on the way) and Maité would bring desert. We gave ourselves plenty of time to stroll around before the meeting as this had not been possible before (and I had another meeting at 3). There are really three parts to the gardens (originally created in 1626 as the King's herb garden and known as the Jardin du Roi) - the formal landscaped area with trees, shrubs and garden beds (including the Rose Garden, created in 1990). the botanical training area, and the zoo.
There are specialised buildings, such as the large Art Deco Wintergarden (which appears similar to drawings of Josephine's large hothouse at Malmaison) ,and the Mexican and Australian hothouses (all of which have been under repair since before 2005 and therefore inaccessible). The Jardin des Plantes runs a botanical school, which trains botanists, constructs demonstration gardens, and continues to exchange seeds to maintain biotic diversity (about 4500 plants are arranged by family on a one hectare plot) but it looked a little sad the day we visited). The zoo was constructed in 1795 to house the animals from the royal menagerie and is now world heritage listed as an example of its type.
Maité introduced us to another artist who works with vegetable dyes and had recently had an exhibition at the gardens. Although she uses a variety of vegetable dyes in her work Betty works predominately with indigo and invites us to visit her studio later in the week to see the process.
The next day we are off to the Bois (wood) de Boulogne which is a large park located along the western edge of Paris. The wood covers an area of approximately 2,090 acres, which is 2.5 times larger than Central Park in New York and 3.3 times larger than London's Hyde Park. There are thirty-five kilometres of footpaths, eight kilometres of cycle paths and twenty-nine kilometres of riding tracks. The wood has a history dating back to 717 and also includes the Longchamps racecourse, the Chateau de Bagatelle and the Jardin d'Acclimatation (now mainly an amusement area for families and children). Sounds a bit daunting but our plan was to visit Guimard's other remaining metro station at Porte Dauphine then head into the wood for a short walk and a picnic. Simple really - Metro to Etoille (Arc de Triomphe) then a stroll down avenue Foch (very wealthy, homes of Princesses and movie stars) take photos of the metro station then cross the boulevarde Peripherique into the wood. It all went according to plan until after our picnic in a shady spot under the trees when we decided to continue on down the path and arrive at Porte Maillot for the metro home. A beautiful day (one of those great to be alive days) and the scenery was most enjoyable - lightly wooded with patches of dense forest and open parkland, steams and ponds and, eventually, a large lake complete with picnickers, lovers and fishermen. The problem was that when we walked out into the street nothing made sense - there were no references that we could link back to our map (which covers all the arrondissements of Paris). It took some time but eventually we realised that we had walked right across the wood (not along the eastern edge as we thought) and ended up in Neuilly sur Seine which is, technically, one of the suburbs of Paris even though it is 'outside' (beyond the Peripherique). It is also, according to Wikipedia, one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe (but very upmarket).
In the evening we attended a performance at the Cite by another Japanese pianist - a contemporary piece by a Finnish composer followed by an absolutely amazing rendition of a piece by Liszt.
Wednesday was a final visit to the Musee des Arts Decoratif to review the first five years of Art et Decoration and say our farewells to the staff who have been so helpful. After a final lunch in the Tuilleries gardens (where a giant ferris wheel had been set up along with other carnival rides for the summer - seemed very incongruous) we set off for Betty's studio. The studio is in a street adjacent to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise which is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the graves of those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the site of three World War I and WWII memorials. We have been here several times in the past and decide to take the bus to the top of the cemetery and visit some of the graves as we walk through to the studio. Rene Lalique and Sarah Bernhardt (who helped to make him so famous with all the pieces he made for her) along with the writers Moliere and La Fontaine are along the path we choose and, as we near the bottom of the cemetery we find ourselves in the Avenue des Acacias which is probably a fitting end to our Paris journey (not a dead end but a stop along the way).

Betty's studio is narrow and multi level and reminds us of a Japanese workshop. We share tea and she tells us about her work which is primarily focused on using indigo (which is created by the action of bacteria working on the plant in a kind of soup kept at a constant 25 degrees and fed on bran) to dye natural fibres in a traditional Japanese style which she learned while working in Japan for three years - it is beautiful. She also teaches, consults on interior design and exhibits (such is the life of an artist the world over). In a book on Japanese art and Art Nouveau I come across an image of a Paris door by Guimard which she says is quite famous and gives directions on how to find it. Betty was born on the left bank and grew up in Paris so it is fascinating to compare our impressions over the years with her experiences of the city.