Day 19 – Getting High in Paris

Today we leave the apartment after noon. We have been lying in and luxuriating in just being here, now without an agenda, just happiness.

We decide to have a relaxing day – we both have sore legs – and so we plan to visit Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the north part of the city that we have become aware of from the Paris Daily Photo website (which I highly recommend). After being in Giverny yesterday we crave nature, so we pack books and ride the Metro through many lines and transfers to get to the park.

It is lovely and as soon as we enter the park steep cement stairs lovingly cast to look like logs confront us! We climb. Sore legs be damned, this is beautiful! The park has very old deciduous trees and some flowerbeds. There is lots of grass, which is unusual for Parisian parks – and more unusual, this grass you can sit on! We climb up a height that provides a vista of a further hill that has a small domed shelter on it. On we hike, past a waterfall that is obviously man made, but pleasant in that it is the one place where the noise of the city is fully masked by the sounds of nature. We walk over a bridge and up to the summit. From the domed structure there is a great view to the north to Sacre Coeur and a view below to a lake and more paths and walkways. Clearly this is a big park.

Leaving the height we cross a suspension bridge over a lake and watch joggers and grannies with their treasured grandchildren and many others just enjoy the green space. We stop at a brasserie in the park and enjoy coffee and beer overlooking the trees. We watch a heron-like bird fly into a nest high in a tree that has cones like our pines, but they are round. We pull out our books once, but there is too much going on to read. Life in the park, in Paris!

As we leave the park, walking by ancient Gingko Biloba trees and kids playing in artificial streams, we are thrilled that Parisians have this place to come to learn to love nature.

In the subway we see someone across the tracks wearing a Canada shirt …clearly of recent Olympic vintage. Has he enjoyed Vancouver or Whistler the way we are enjoying Paris?

On the way up we noticed ads in the subway for a tower in Montparnasse that promises a 360° view of the city. We look for the ad again and it promises the tower is open until 11:00 pm. Off we go.

On the way we swallow some Italian food. Dennis thinks he orders chicken pasta and the chicken comes cooked in little pieces with roasted red peppers, he is surprized, but delighted by the flavour. My Marguerita pizza is OK, but nothing to write home about, so erase this!

The entrance to Tower Montparnasse has no charm to it. There is just a teller and an elevator at the side of a tall office tower. When you get to the 56^th floor – which, by the way, takes only 38 seconds in the high-speed elevator they have – the views are breathtaking! There is everything we have seen and everything we haven’t laid out before us like a carpet. There is the inside viewing room on the 56^th floor and the option to hike up three floors to the 59^th.

Yup, we hike. And we are rewarded with views that cannot be matched, because before us is the Eifel tower and we could be eye-to-eye with the people on the top, but we are looking at the Eifel tower and they are looking at a boring office building! It is so sweet!

We luxuriate in the view and the lack of crowds for an hour…seeing everywhere we have been, almost, and so many places there are to explore. Paris has so many green spaces, obvious from this perspective. And so many nooks and crannies that you could spend years here and not feel bored, as long as you were prepared to go out and adventure.

We leave full of beautiful vistas and happy. We also have to consult both our map and compass to find our walk home! City of angled streets, we adore you!