Imagine a day with intermittent rain, with a promise of late afternoon clearing. It
is not only your last day in Paris, but the afternoon is the last free time you have. What are you going
to do? First thing is to get out of your hotel room:
You then go to a park and wait for the sun to come out before it sets, of course. And that park? One I had never gone to before, but a very nice one indeed. I'd recommend it highly for a visit, in the daytime.
What is the big attraction in a park? Usually it is trees:
After that it is a a particular tree here or there:
And after that it is the tree that makes the whole excursion worthwhile:
But in this particular park there is more than just trees. It was built over a hundred
years ago by "terraforming" (my word choice, not a Parisian choice) an old rock
quarry, making it from a gaping series of rocky holes into a place where there are rock buttes,
a tunnelled
path, 
bridges, a lake and a waterfall, a copious number
of trees, grassy areas, playgrounds, trails and
all within the city, just a few miles
northeast of the Montmartre.
But what made the park more enjoyable, of course, was the throng of people, of all ages, who
melted out of the city and into this park with their dogs, canes, baby carriages and toddlers to enjoy what was
predicted to be a very short time of sunlight and warmth. As a courtesy I did not take unauthorized pictures
of people, but the setting of this park deserves a few other views:
It is difficult to capture the play
of low sunlight coming through some very small holes in an otherwise overcast sky, and adding just a little light
into the leaves of trees. So please just pretend these lights and colors are brilliant, even if in these
pictures there is little brilliance.
It is amazing to me that such a green and quiet place can be set right up against the bustling
city, but it really all fits quite nicely. And since it was so close by, it was a real temptation, to which
I happily succumbed, to stop and visit the Montmartre on the way back to the hotel where the packing chore awaited.
And so ended a very nice afternoon and evening in the big city. Not too eventful?
Well, maybe not, but so what? I did help a young momma carry her baby carriage up a long flight of stairs,
in the park, while she carried the baby. It is always a nice feeling to be able to do something small, something
anonymous, yet something that makes a tiny bit of difference in someone's life, isn't it?