The roads leading up to the gardens and palace of Luxembourg are lined with antique shops, rare book stores full of aged originals, and art shops whose walls are covered with paintings and whose shelves are lined with bronze ants and cats.  The palace is pretty enough from the outside, but the real catch is the garden, beautiful even in winter, the largest park in the city of Paris.  Snow covered the square patches of lawn, the traditional layout of a French garden.  Sculptures occupied places on either side, and the most fascinating sculpture was one of a very, very large head that people took turns stretching their arms around for the sake of photographs.  More traditional statues, fountains, and monuments line the straight paths of the garden.  Benches wait expectantly for passengers at the peripheries, where visitors must enjoy sitting on warmer days.

K.B.