The Château de Vincennes and the Parc Floral de Paris

All the strikes today are on the RER so we stayed with the Metro. We got a bit more sleep last night so felt adventurous. After breakfast, we walked to the rue de Bac Metro, changed to the line 1 at Concorde and rode to the end at Château de Vincennes. The Metro line ends at the Château entrance so we walked in and found the ticket office. The Donjon is huge and imposing. Ticketed, we entered along with dozens of school kids on field trips and started climbing castle stairs.

The château is marvelously medieval and views from it are great. No furniture but a couple interactive exhibits . . . one played music of the times . . ,. and there were several maquettes.

We climbed up and down castle stairs trying to avoid small children and had a grand time. Exited the castle and walked across the courtyard to the chapel. It was modeled on Ste. Chapelle in Paris so is high and light but the windows don’t compare . The stained glass in Ste. Chapelle is much more beautiful. This chapel did have a very interesting Rose Window though. There was an exhibit of WWI posters that was very interesting. Those were awful times! My grandfather was sent to France in WWI and never would talk about it. I did see his gas mask in the attic once when helping my grandmother clean house.

We left the château looking for something a bit different for lunch and found Pizza del Castello right across from the Château at the corner of ave. de Paris and rue Robert Giraudineau. We didn't get their wood-fired pizza although it looked and smelled terrific but we did order Italian and had a very pleasant change-of-pace lunch. After lunch we circled the Château to the Parc Floral de Paris in the Bois de Vincennes and spent some time exploring it. You could easily spend a full day just in the park. The Paris Zoo is in the Vincennes Park although we didn't get that far. It was starting to get hot so we headed back to the subway for the trip home. Since it's the first stop, we had the train to ourselves for a while but it was full by the time we got downtown. [Pizza del Castello, 26 ave. de Paris, tel: +33 (0)1 4328 3357; Pizza del Castello web site]

Walked over to the Tuileries and grabbed a couple chairs in the shade. I caught up on my Ina Caro book and Ed people watched. As we were leaving, we noticed a group of painters so walked over to see what they were doing. They had water brushes and were all painting people from the crowds. Fun!