Day 26 September 10, 2008
After one week, Britton decided he had enough of me (who can blame him?) and departed, but not before we ventured to one of Paris' two huge parks. It's true that you can't trip without falling into a park in the city while hitting your head on some statue, but these are different. They're two massive areas of green space on the eastern and western boundaries. On this day we went to the eastern one called Bois de Vincennes.
There's a real live castle out here with moats and forts and other medieval things.
The park also has a zoo, several lakes, islands and a Buddhist center. I'm not sure how that last one fits in, but why not. It's a ginormous place. The actual size is 995 hectares, which is 2458 acres in plain American English. Consider that New York's Central Park is 843 acres. See? Huge. And it's one of two parks of this size in Paris.
The reason for so much expanse of land is clear to me. If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now: The Frenchies love to picnic. So that's what we did, too. It was a very nice and relaxing place. I know there's tons of things to see in the city, but I highly recommend giving the Bois de Vincennes a visit next time you come to Paris. You can tour the castle, rent a bike to ride around the grounds and then go to the zoo. We actually didn't do any of that, but ummmm, it sounds fun, right?