weird and wonderful colors and shapes

The Natural History Museum in Paris is a collection of associated museums (they're not apparently actually one entity; you have to pay separate to get into each section, though there is a discount for having been to another). They consist of a large garden with buildings around the perimeter, plus a zoo. Of course, in February, the gardens are perhaps not at their best.

Tai chi in the park

Pollinator house

The Jardin de Plantes section hosted the exhibit "Mille et Une Orchidées" (A thousand and one orchids) in their large greenhouse, and we managed to see it on its last day. So many beautiful flowers, in all sizes and shapes and colors. Have a sampling of the pictures we took that actually came out more or less in focus.

The greenhouse and associated buildings is also home to a collection of arid and semi-arid plants (succulents and cacti) which was pretty cool

We stopped at the botanical museum, which wasn't very large, but had a number of interesting, mostly historical, displays.

Madder dye, which comes from a plant

Seeds come in some crazy shapes

We also visited the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution which is essentially the biggest taxidermy museum ever. The building is incredible - huge, gorgeous woodwork, with exhibits all around. There are animals that used to be in the various royal menageries, examples of hundreds of species. The restoration work done on the specimens, as well as the careful thought put into their display represents some amazing work. Some of the specimens are in dioramas showing the animals' natural habitat, but most are in open-air displays charging through the building, organized somewhat by animal type (aquatic creatures in one area, land animals in another; groups of arboreal monkeys or birds hanging out of reach from the balconies).

Skeleton of a dodo, with a reconstruction of one in the background.

And rounding out the day of weird and wonderful colors and shapes, we visited the Galerie de Minérologie et Géologie. In addition to raw and polished stones, there were some beautiful art pieces and jewelry (which we don't seem to have taken any photos of...)

Mesolite and Stilbite

Rhodochrosite inside a stalactite 

Cavansite on stilbite

Goethite

Quartz agate

A collection of really large crystals; human (me!) on the left shown for scale.

Azurite (blue) and Malachite (green). I learned at this museum that they are almost the same; azurite with time and exposure to air turns into malachite

Really large geodes. Amethyst qaurtz

These are the same rock under normal and black lights.

And for dessert that evening, we started in on the macarons.