Flowing south from the edge of Paris to the town of Massy, a distance of 7.4 miles (12 km), there’s a bike and foot path called La Coulée Verte du Sud Parisien. You can pick it up in Paris just behind the Montparnasse Train Station. Enter through an archway leading off Place de Catalogne in the 14th arrondissement and enter the peaceable world of Paris’s southern suburbs.

The first mile or so of the path progresses with fits and starts as you wind your way outside of the city and into the immediate suburbs of Malakoff then Châtillon. Little by little the path then settles into an easy-going, occasionally rolling, unhurried green (verte) flow (coulée) passing through the relatively tranquil towns of Bagneux, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Sceaux, Châtenay-Malabry, Antony, Verrières-le-Buisson, and into Massy.

Two-thirds along the way is the most well-known greenery to the immediately south of Paris, Parc des Sceaux, a delicious spot for an afternoon loll-about after a genteel ride out and before a satisfied ride home.

I pedaled in the company of Va-nu-pieds. Va-nu-pieds is the pseudonym—the lens name, if you will—of a French photographer whose unique work will soon be appearing on France Revisited. A va-nu-pieds, literally “goes barefoot,” is a vagabond, a tramp, a ragamuffin. Further explanations will come when Va-nu-pieds exclusive images begin appearing in this site.

Va-nu-pieds took his first series of photos for France Revisited yesterday afternoon while we wandered through the park. I took a few Skytree shots while there, some of which will also eventually appear on this site. We spoke of ways in which image describes place, but I’ll save that discussion for another time. (Actually, you can catch a glimpse of that by reading my preceding blog post.)

For now, though, allow me to take the tour-guide approach to tell you why, in the right weather—and yesterday certainly was—Parc de Sceaux is such a worthy destination for a traveler looking to enjoy some green time just outside of the city.

There’s also a chateau here, which one sees from the Coulée Verte.

Chateau de Sceaux, view from the Coulée Verte. Photo GLK.

 

One glimpse of it and you’re sure to want to approach for a closer view.

Chateaux de Sceaux, a closer view. Photo GLK

Entrance is free. You can walk your bikes through the park, but Va-nu-pieds would have none of that, so we attached them outside and spend a few hours wandering around.

The chateau was mostly constructed under the ownership of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), Louis XIV’s Minister of Finance. It’s a photogenic place in a post-card kind of way, but the main attraction of Sceaux is the park, created by the grandfather of French landscape gardeners André Le Nôtre (1613-1700). Le Nôtre’s work at Versailles was already well underway by the time Colbert purchased Sceaux.  Hired by Colbert then by Colbert’s son the Marquis de Seignelay, Le Nôtre designed what remains one of the pleasing and accessible noble parks of the Paris region.

As with other noble parks in the region it had its 19th-century era of ruin but has since been lovingly restored

Its trademark features are its cascade,

Cascade, Parc de Sceaux. Photo GLK.

which includes these spouts,

The cascade, three of five mouths. Photo GLK.

its Grand Canal,

Grand Canal, Parc de Sceaux. Photo GLK.

and its perfectly aligned rows of populars, plane trees, horse chestnuts, lindens, and other trees whose names I never remember.

Picnickers between closing walls of shade. Dappled sculpture. Photos GLK.

The sculptures are less noteworthy, but I like the image above right.

It’s simply a delightful place for a stroll, a picnic, a lounge on the grass (actually allowed here!), photographic explorations, a jog, prolonged conversations, a nap, romance, and, as far as I’m concerned, a illicit pee in the woods. There are snack stands and cafés in the park.

Other than biking along the Coulée Verte, Parc de Sceaux is easily reachable from the center of Paris by suburban train. Take RER line B, direction Massy-Palaiseau, directly to the Parc de Sceaux stop, a 21-minute ride from Chatelet-Les Halles. The park is then a 3-minute walk from the station.

Click here to learn more about Parc de Sceaux in French.

Here’s a Google map indicating the path of the Coulée Verte. Zoom in to see Sceaux.

To get a sense of tourist hell in France in summer, go inside the Palace of Versailles sometime between 11am and 4pm. While your guidebook uses words like splendor, luxury, opulence, etiquette, and your guide invites you to imagine nobles playing billiards, the queen playing cards, and the arrival of the Turkish ambassador before King Louis XIV in the Hall of Mirrors, your mind shouts “AIR, I NEED AIR!”

Palace of Versailles: Angled view from the (new) royal gate. Photo GLK.

First, arrive in the town of Versailles in the middle of the afternoon to visit the heart of the town for a couple of hours. Versailles was designed as a royal town with a trio of wide avenues leading to the palace and well ordered streets in between. It has remained a pleasant, upscale town with a 1650-1750 heart.

Even with lots of shops are closed in August, the two central quarters of the town—the Saint-Louis Quarter and the Notre-Dame Quarter—make for an enjoyable walk-about, with the requisite café and pastry stops, window shopping, and food market gawking, visits to the churches that gave the name to the respective quarters, and eyes open for architectural details. Take note of the numerous restaurants and outdoor seating in case you decide to stay in town for dinner. You might begin your explorations of the town by picking up a map at the tourist office at 2 bis avenue de Paris, easily found between the RER (suburban train) station and the palace.

Sometime after 5:45pm, when tickets for the gardens are no longer sold and the ticket-takers have shuttered their windows, freely enter the gardens from any entrance and enjoy a stroll through Louis XIV’s backyard. The gates of some of the fountain areas will be closed, but the main vistas and the side paths are increasingly left to you in the early evening. You’ll be entering as those who earlier suffered through palace hell are heading out. And you’ll quickly discover that the grand view of the palace of Versailles isn’t from the front but from the back.

Palace of Versailles: View from the gardens toward central portion and the Hall of Mirrors. Photo GLK

The gardens then stay open until 8:30pm from April 1 to October 31. (This alternate approach to Versailles isn’t valid Nov. 1-March 31, when the gardens close at 6pm.)

If in no rush to return to Paris after leaving the gardens, you can stay in that alternate Versailles frame of mind by having an easy-going dinner in town.

Note: If, as a part of this alternate Versailles approach, you nevertheless wish to visit the central rooms of the interior of the palace with minimal crowds, arrive in the town of Versailles in the early afternoon, have lunch, then arrive at the palace between 4 and 5pm, when the ticket line is relatively short to non-existent. You’ll then have an hour’s visit inside before going out to the gardens.

The palace is open until 6:30pm April 1-Oct. 31 and until 5:30pm Nov.1-March 31 and is closed Monday year-round. For further details on opening times and tickets click here.

For France Revisited articles about Versailles see:
Versailles, Versigh, Versails, Versighs, Versize, Versace: How I Learned to Forget the Crowds and Appreciate Versailles
Part I: Marie-Antoinette’s Versailles Featuring Lolly Winston
Part II: Louis XIV’s Versailles. Purgatory and Heaven, War and Peace, Mirrors and Fountains
Part III: The American Versailles. Not Impressed Yet? Try This!

I don’t get much of a chance to dig into the soil in Paris. In fact, there are few places in the City of Light where one can even walk on the grass. Not that I was much of a gardener before moving to Paris, but I do recognize the pleasure, at least in theory, of crouching in the soil, digging, weeding, and watching things flower, grow, take form. My planting thumb, though rarely exercised, turns out to be inadvertently green to judge from the plants on the small balcony of my apartment in Paris; they survive no matter how long I’ve been gone, even though the balcony above mine prevents them from receiving much rainfall.

I’ve been in the U.S. for three weeks now taking an East-Coast road-trip, doing some consulting, having meetings, and seeing friends and family. When I get back to Paris next week I’m sure to find my plants looking dry and forlorn but alive and willing to be nursed back to health through the spring. The secret to raising plants, I’ve found, is to not get too attached to them.

So I’m trying not to get too emotionally involved with the silky dogwood that I planted in my brother’s yard in New Jersey on Arbor Day, April 24, but I confess that I’ve been checking on it several times a day and will probably inquire about it often when I return to Paris. I hope that one day it will take its place among the other hearty blooming trees in the yard such as the pear tree below.

That’s my mother in the photo above. Proud as she was to pose with it on Arbor Day, she’s actually quite the fatalist when it comes to new plantings. No sooner had she taken the picture of me (below) with the newly planted dogwood then she told me that between the deer and the lawnmower I shouldn’t get too attached.

What I especially like about this sprig of a dogwood (it’s the foot-high twig the shovel in case you don’t see it) is that I planted it on Arbor Day. You see, one of the great pleasures of travel is to hit upon a local holiday, even—or perhaps especially—when you’ve simply traveled back to your old backyard. And so it was with me and Arbor Day in West Trenton, New Jersey.

Truth be told, I wasn’t aware that it was Arbor Day until I went to the Ewing Public Library and was happy-arbor-dayed at the entrance by two kindly women from the West Trenton Garden Club who were handing out the sprigs of silky dogwood (cornus amomum). They seemed to be the only people in the area who knew it was Arbor Day. For the rest of the day I went around trying to spread the word, but few people believed me. Most assumed that I meant Earth Day, which was two days before, while one person suggested that I was confusing Earth Day with some French holiday. Another insisted that Earth Day had actually replaced Arbor Day since he couldn’t recall anyone mentioning Arbor Day after he left elementary school.

Arbor Day is actually a great unsung and original American holiday. It is a rarity in that it promotes neither politics, nor religion, nor nationalism, nor veterans, nor an ethnic group, nor much in the way of commerce, the combination of which explains why it passes so unnoticed. No one outside of garden clubs makes an effort to claim it—or recuperate it, as the French would say—as their own because there would be little immediate advantage in doing so.

Arbor Day is also a rarity on the American calendar in that it originated on neither the East Coast nor the West Coast but smack in the middle, in Nebraska, where civic-minded tree-lover J. Sterling Morton organized the first Arbor Day in April 1872. Within a decade it had spread to other states, with school districts often being the local purveyors of the greening of America. National Arbor Day is now celebrated the last Friday in April, though some states prefer the last Monday, others, particularly in the southeast, celebrate it earlier in the year in keeping with the arrival of prime tree-planting season to the region, and a few northern border states opt for May.

Arbor Day is indeed now overwhelmed by Earth Day. Despite the latter’s laudable goal of placing concern and care for the environment on our national agenda, there was something suspicious about Earth Day from the start since it was intended to teach and demonstrate rather than truly celebrate and honor.

I was in 6th grade when the first Earth Day was declared in 1970. As the school bus was approaching the school that April 22 morning there was a tremendous traffic jam since some progressive-minded older students had apparently decided that we should all get out of the bus and walk the remaining half-mile to school. What I remember of the first Earth Day is therefore cars and buses idling for an hour or two and a long walk past a hundred exhaust pipes. What I remember of last week’s Earth Day is radio and television commercials appealing for Earth-loving consumers to drive out to the mall to buy stuff that will biodegrade sometime before North Korean uranium rods.

Earth Day is a fine idea both nationally and internationally, and some day a traveler from Mars will get the kind of thrill of traveling to our planet for Earth Day that travelers now get by going to Holland for the Queen’s Birthday (April 30). For the time being, though, Earth Day isn’t pagan enough to have much cultural interest and it’s too vague to offer anything but an occasion for national and international corporations trying to outgreen each other. Arbor Day, on the other hand, means the planting of and caring for trees, and so has little place in the economy but lots of place in the backyard or the local park.

Faithful readers may want to check back in 5 or 10 years to see how my silky dogwood is doing, that is if it manages to escape the dual threat of the deer and the lawnmower.

In the meantime, put Arbor Day 2010 on your calendar and don’t believe the Earth Day commercials.

For more about Arbor Day and state by state dates see www.arborday.org.