Oct. 27th: A Walk in a Park

Monday —  Lundi

We have settled into a late morning getting up because what is vacation for if not to sleep in some.  Coffee and French at Chaize.  Today is a day without a planned activity so we decided to take our barista Julian’s suggestion to walk up to a nearby park, Butte-Chaumont.  We purchased a couple of ham and cheese “buns” and a slice of carrot cake to take with us.  Ham and cheese is a staple here and all the bread, whatever shape is excellent. 

The walk took about an hour up into neighborhoods that seemed more recently gentrified or, rather, repopulated.  The city is always buzzing, it seems and the streets and bike lanes busy.  Even so, while you want to look both ways and be cautious, you never feel like you’re about to get run over, just that you might cause a scooter or a car or a bike or whatever else to have to come to a screeching halt while you blunder across some rue or boulevard or avenue or chemin or alleyway; as the streets are laid out in old-fashioned configurations whereby at intervals the throughways kind of crash into a roundabout to sort things out for the moment only to fly off in half a dozen directions or more from there.  Again, Google GPS has been helpful.

As always, we enjoyed the long walk, the sight seeing, the attempts at sign reading and entered at the pointy end of the paisley-shaped park.  The walk was aimed for a hopeful central stone gazebo up on a promontory in the middle of the park across a bridge from where there would be a promised stunning view of Paris.  However, that part of the park was closed due to the collapsing of the gypsum stone beneath the cemented faux stone designs.  The park was built, laid over in a sort of Disney-fied way, a former gypsum quarry (gypsum used to make plaster) at the bottom of which are long unused train tracks and a small lake encircling the stone center.  This was done in 1867.  Since then, water and tree roots have degraded to underlying gypsum to the point of erosion and collapse of the infrastructure.  The signage about this (posted as recently as 2022) announces that they are thinking about what to do and will get back to everyone later.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime, enjoy what sections of the park are available.  So, we did.  There are paths and stairs and little stone water fountains, small waterfalls and obviously designed small water features all around the closed off central piece.  We wandered here and there, sat for a while and ate our picnic lunch and meandered some more.  We got a laugh out of a sign which read, basically, Don’t Feed the Birds.  There are a number of crows and waterfowl (even a pair of green parrots) going here and there and plenty of folks with bags of popcorn or sandwiches and such.  Thus, the sign, requesting that we don’t give them any of our scraps.  But this was a sign that makes sense only in France as it seemed to assume that any French person would not take “Don’t Feed the Birds” without some further explanation.  So the sign reads on:  “Pourquoi” and what follows is several categories of rationales as to why one should not feed the birds.  Apparently, just the fact that they are here means they are able to find enough food in the natural environment to afford to live there.  As well, if they eat food from humans, they might get sick from the heavy glutens and sugars present in such faire.  And lastly, in case by now you are still unconvinced as to why you should not feed the birds, you should realize that the environmental impact of such activity damages also the park itself.  So, as I said, DON’T FEED THE BIRDS. Merci, beaucoup.

We wandered on, now aware of the several children who apparently can’t read or reason just tossing their bagged snacks to the friendly-yet-threatening geese.   

The bridge is closed off with a sign promising to get it back open at some time in the future. But what is the future? You can only ask, "Pourquoi?"

Pourquoi?

Pourquoi?

As the sun set over the park, we made our long way back to the home neighborhood and, after a quick change headed up the Rue de Charonne and scored a fantastic dinner at L’Abribus (The Bus Stop).  A friendly, energetic waitress who basically worked the entire restaurant cheerily appreciated our halting efforts at French and brought us wine and a salmon pasta for Kathy and a house hamburger for me.  What I learned is what I already knew is that the French generally eat everything with a knife and fork.  I tried eating the hamburger American-style but found out right away that the chef had not intended the burger to be eaten by hand.  In fact, once I started on the now deconstructed pile of food with the utensils, the whole meal made a sort of sense.  Also, they put the french fries (frites) in mayonnaise versus ketchup, which is passable.  After I was done, a young woman sat nearby with the same meal I had and I watched as she sawed away at her burger expertly and consumed it from one end to the other, all while engaged in conversation.  She did however, use her fingers to dip the fries in the mayo, so I am still working things out. We agreed that this was maybe the best meal yet and will likely go back before we leave.

This is Pourquoi!