April 12, 2002
14. Parc
This weekend we went to Parc de Sceaux so I could fulfill last week's promise that I would take some pictures of a park in Paris. In fact, Parc de Sceaux is outside the boundaries of Paris to the south, but it is still accessible from the RER (high speed suburban train), so it counts.
If you take the RER, get off at the Parc de Sceaux station (not so difficult). If you take a car, carefully examine the following picture to see if you can figure out which cars are parked.
The land used to belong to an aristocratic family, who had built a chateau there. In 1670, Jean-Baptiste Colbert bought the property. Colbert was superintendent and Secretary of State under Louis XIV, and decided to extensively remodel. Many of the greatest artists and architects of the day were worked to transform the grounds and chateau into a sumptious residence fit for a king. The notable André Le Nôtre designed the grounds and gardens.
Of course, much of it was burned and dismantled during the Revolution, but the chateau and grounds were rebuilt in the mid 19th century. The Musée de l'Ile de France is now located here, and the Orangerie has chamber music in the summer -- and Johnny Hallyday celebrated his 57th birthday there with a concert in the year 2000.
Of course, you are familiar with Johnny Hallyday? He's a grand interpreter of mainly popular American songs such as "Frankie et Johnny", "Viens Danser le Twist", "Johnny, Reviens!" and "Da Dou Ron Ron".
The grounds are very attractive for strolling, and there are large areas of grass for sitting and chatting, picnicing or playing sports (ball games are forbidden). There are toy sailing boats in the grand canal, and I believe that you are permitted to fish before 14h00 on weekdays. There's a fairly avant-garde playground with children swarming over wooden playground equipment sculpted to look like comfortable easy chairs or climbable bookshelves. Amusingly enough, one part of the playground was designed to look very unstable and dangerous.
In addition to the kilometers of canals that were build over three hundred years ago (at time of writing), there are several unusually large fountains.
The Grand Canal used to be lined with huge poplars, carefully trimmed and shaped to be particularly impressive. A storm on December 26th, 1999 (millenium bug?) knocked most of them into the canal. They've all been replaced with new and young poplars, so a dozen years from now, I can come back and see what it would have looked like.
In fact, there were incredible lengths of perfectly flat land lined by impressive and geometrically trimmed trees and hedges. There were also several buildings (such as the aforementioned built, burned and rebuilt chateau), but I was particularly impressed by the blossoming trees.
Of course you can find these pink and white flowering trees in Canada as well, especially lining the streets in Victoria. It's quite another thing to see an entire square park filled with them -- especially because they are really only in full flower for a short time. Many people were sitting under the trees and enjoying the sun and color.
A couple of other things -- the French presidential elections are coming up. France has a Prime Minister and a President (Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac), and due to some oddness in timing and public opinion, they aren't currently from the same political party. Due to some campaign expense laws, there haven't been many posters or advertisements out yet -- I've been told that it generally all occurs in the last few weeks. Rather than having the candidates stick their posters in all sorts of inappropriate and historical places, the city of Paris has erected temporary metal walls specifically for political posters around trees, in parks and about the metro.
I believe there are fourteen candidates for the position, and the president is elected by a majority of popular vote. If the first round of voting doesn't award a single person a majority, they eliminate some of the candidates with the fewest votes and hold another round.
Since I signed up for the 3km cross country for the coupe de site for our group, I need to get another medical certificate to ensure that I'm not going to die during the run. This is the third medical certificate I've needed since I've arrived.
I reported this child to the appropriate French authorities because I have reason to believe that isn't an officially licensed Batman costume. Did you realize that the official spelling of Spider-Man MUST include a dash and a capital M? I saw the movie La Famille Tenenbaum. If you didn't like this movie (even after reflection), you were wrong.
