Christmas Day – Paris style

So what do you do on Christmas Day in Paris? Most everyone else was probably celebrating with food and family, but we decided to go for a walk in the woods. Sounds like a typical thing for us to do!

There are two major areas termed ‘bois’ or woods on the edge of Paris, and we chose to visit Bois de Vincennes, a 995 hectare (2,458 acres!) park. We were looking for a bit of rural atmosphere and raw nature to remind us of home on Salt Spring.

What we didn’t realize is that Bois de Vincennes is a ‘park in the English landscape manner’ as Wikipedia defines it. This means it has a rather manicured look as you can see from the photo. The grass and walkways are clear of debris – barely a twig or branch in site. The trees are all limbed with only tufts of branches remaining at the top, and the vegetation is arranged in orderly beds under the canopy.

We had a pleasant walk but it wasn’t exactly what we had expected!

We wandered through a section of the woods known as the Parc Floral de Paris. This must be a beautiful area in the spring, but for now, most of the plants are resting. However, what did strike us is the number of familiar plants we found. In fact, in many ways it reminded us of BC – except for its manicured nature!

We especially noticed many mahonia plants, the kind that grow in the wild on Salt Spring, but here they were growing 5 and 6 feet tall! I guess the weather is milder here and promotes the extra height.

David particularly admired a tall tree with unusual buds (behind him in the photo). It turned out to be a magnolia tree. Won’t that be magnificent in a few weeks!

At one end of the Bois de Vincennes is the Chateau de Vincennes. It used to be a favourite second home to many of 14th century French kings. It is a very strange looking castle from the outside.

There are several different styles of construction in the walls and buildings, and a corner of one of the exterior walls definitely looked like it had suffered severely in some battle. We weren’t tempted to explore it further. It was so uninspiring that I only took one photo of it. Can you see it in the distance beyond all the trees?

Bois de Vincennes was originally used as the hunting grounds for the kings of France, and then as a military exercise area. Napoleon III turned it into a park in 1860, and it now includes a zoo and a number of sports venues including a ‘hippodrome’ for horse-racing and a velodrome. We’ll come back again and explore more of the woods to see if we can find anything that looks ‘rural’.

In late afternoon we headed back to our flat on the Butte and on the way we passed by Sacre Coeur again. This time I was ready to climb the steps!

I counted as I climbed. 272 steps! And that isn’t all of them. In the central area there is a ramp at the bottom before you reach the stairs. Next time we’ll go up the side where the stairs start at the bottom.

This is such a majestic building that I can’t help taking photos of it. Hope you don’t mind! You can see a bit of the glow of the setting sun on its facade in this photo.

There were tourists galore, street merchants selling their wares and musicians performing on the steps as we climbed, but we didn’t mind. We were heading home to our cozy flat feeling more like a Parisian than a visitor.

All in all, it was a great Christmas Day!