A Paris: Day 4- Saturday 11 June

Getting out of the apartment at a decent time, I decided to walk east today, as the main bit of Paris lay to the west. Walking up the Boulevard Diderot to Place de la Nation, I came across an antiques market maybe four blocks long, not really my shebang, and bypassed the chance to buy Tori a vintage leopard minidress-thing, or a really old chair, or forks, African masks, fake fruit, things. Reaching the place, which consisted of: One (1) really big statue, and at one end, two (2) reasonably tall columns [I can't imagine the amount of history I miss every day [but thankfully remain relatively untroubled]], I chanced upon another marche, this one slightly longer than the Bastille one, and was very happy. Checking my map, I'd say it's around a quarter of a mile long, probably under, but anyways, less clothing, more gore, including featherless decapitated chickens and yet-unmarred songbirds.

Walking past various sports centres on the periphery of the main city, I made my way to the enormous Bois de Vincennes and actually spent most of the rest of my day there. If you google it, you'll see it's reasonably huge, and I did a squiggling path from the north then all around in it, so tomorrow I'm going to have to think of something to see that requires less walking, because my god did I walk, at least ten miles and I'm not kidding, eeeuuuuuaaaggghh. Right, so I saw various lacs [lakes, doi], all of them picturesque with the two largest at opposite ends coming complete with Frenchies laughing in rowboats, women feeding birds and lots of baby birds bread or lettuce, willows leaning out of the water with benches beside placed just so, you get the idea. The westernmost one even had peacocks on one of the islands. In between seeing the various lacs, I got a good view of the eastern banlieus [suburbs] of Paris from a cemetery [waste of a good view? Is that disrespectful?], caught a bit of a horserace peeking through the hedges alongside the Hippodrome de Vincennes, took a minitour of the cutesy neighbourhood of Saint Maurice, was passed by many a jogger and saw a hell of a lot of trees. I didn't realize somehow that the Marne was so close, otherwise I would have visited it, but oh, well, another day, preferably one when I have my metro pass.

The Parc Floral de Paris was pretty fabulous, though I need to go back when the bonsai room is open; it was made of cultivated flower bed bits, as expected, including a lily area, but also had a hilly area and a sort of mirror pond moat facing an open-air theatre where a jazz ensemble was playing. Easily an acre of jungle gym held hundreds, hundreds of children, screaming, and contemporary-looking greenhouses/glass-walled rooms had various different environments inside. One of the better bits was a smell garden that had roses and jasmine and lots of other flowers and herbs and bees and happy people. Exiting the Parc, I saw four wedding parties in an adjoining bit of the Bois and the unexpectedly fortress-like Chateau [castle] de Vincennes, bought food and Orangina at a Monoprix and took the RER back, because my feet huuuuurt.

Weird things about France: The lakes are highly artificial and more like pools that were let go and fish happen to live in than anything else. I noticed the water level was only a few inches below the walkways and lawns, and this is because the excess drains out in these combination storm drain/swimming pool overflow water things and disappears .... Child safety is also less so in France, it seems, as a twenty five foot tall ropes course with gravel underfoot existed.

antiques stands