Parc des Buttes Chaumont, situated in the 19th arrondissement of Paris was commissioned by Napoleon III to rework the former limestone quarry into a beautiful public park complete with a little lake, waterfalls, a folly and lots of trees and plants of different origin.
You can get to this park from the 5 or 7 line. : Buttes Chaumont, Laumière or Botzaris. But be warned! If you go anytime soon - the stop on the 7 where you need to transfer to get to these stops (Jaures) is currently closed. So you have to hoof it from the stop before that. Not the nicest area to walk in to get to the park...fair warning.
In hopes of something similar to the sorrow walks over Harper's Ferry I brought Ryan here for the morning to get a bit of nature time.
One of the first things we came upon was this sculpture of Pan
and his owl!
climbing the exotic trees...probably a no-no but this one is a bad seed.
The most picturesque part of the park (at least from far away - its got graffiti all over it up close) is the belvedere of Sybil- which is modeled after the monument of the same name in Italy.
There is also a shallow man-made lake that runs around the cliff with big old trees stretching their branches out over the water.
There is a suspension bridge that runs over the lake up to the folly. I took a short video here that will be featured in an upcoming project. From what I've read this bridge is referred to as the "suicide bridge." Charming!
Some other things about the park I didn't know - there are 4 wifi spots that are part of a city wide wireless internet program. There are 2 restaurants in the park, so I'm told, but I surely didn't see them. Park must be much bigger than what we saw. It's one of the largest in Paris - but it happened to be kinda cold and rainy on this particular day so we didn't stay as long as we might have otherwise.
We did explore though! Gee whiz...someone looks a little scared!
Also, in September, the park hosts Paris's annual Silhouette Short Film Festival.
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