I’m behind on my Paris posts, but this is the last one! Toward the end of my visit, Isabelle, Olivier, and I took the bus and the metro to Trocadéro and crossed the plaza in the middle of the Palais de Chaillot, which was full of tourists milling about and taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower across the Seine. We wended our way downhill within the Jardins du Trocadéro. Our destination was the Aquarium de Paris and, specifically, Hanami, the temporary outdoor Japanese street food café the aquarium had set up. The menu was pan-Asian but with a Japanese focus.

Hanami by the Aquarium de Paris (nobody wanted to sit in the sun!)

At the counter, we ordered takoyaki, three kinds of yakitori (one type was beef, actually), two kinds of dumplings (duck and veggie–in French, dumplings are called raviolis, although at Hanami they might’ve called them gyoza?), and sweet potato fries for good measure. It was sunny and very hot, but some of the (rustic) tables were under a wooden roof, so we were able to sit in the shade. The food was tasty!

Part of our lunch

Next, we went into the aquarium and followed the path through the various exhibits and sections. The Aquarium de Paris is focused on the sea life of France, but France in the sense of its global empire, including its overseas territories in more tropical climes. There were digital panels on the walls that asked True or False questions (aimed at children, judging by the color schemes), and one that struck me was about the largest lagoon in the world. After revealing whether the statement had been true or false, the text noted of the two lagoons (the largest and the second largest?) that “both are French.” That is, they belonged to France. I think one of them was in New Caledonia, and the other was also in the South Pacific. It was very…colonialist.

The kissing fish! They kept doing this; it was very cute.

That aside, the exhibits were pretty nice, with lots of colorful fish. No mammals, however, unlike at the Aquarium of the Pacific. The Aquarium de Paris is known for its Médusarium, which features many species of jellyfish. Somehow, they still seemed harder to photograph than the jellyfish in Long Beach.

Nemo!

Garden eels

A little pufferfish

This last picture of moon jellies comes with a good story. I thought it was one of my better aquarium photos but not intrinsically that amazing. Still, I tweeted it after our visit, and thanks to a few lucky retweets, this became possibly my most successful tweet ever (not that that’s saying much). I hadn’t tagged the aquarium, but somehow its Président Administrateur général found the tweet and replied to it, thanking me (in French) for the beautiful photo :O

Moon jellies