Bois de Vincennes: Chateau & Parc Floral de Paris

Happy birthday to Henry!  We had some extra fun today to celebrate.  He'll likely never have another birthday quite like this one.  Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!

As usual our day started with a late morning stop at our corner boulangerie to buy baguettes for lunch.  Today we brought along cheese, wine and canned fish with mustard-lemon sauce (it turned out to be delicious.)  

At the end of Metro line 1 in the town of Vincennes, we visited the Chateau Vincennes, completed in 1370 by Charles V.  Later Louis XIV lived here before moving to Versailles in 1682.  In case you were wondering, this is the tallest medieval keep (donjon) in France.  

Nik is dwarfed by the keep.  It was surprising how small the king's rooms were; a sign of the times, I think.  This was no Versailles!  Thick, tall walls and deep moats but no gold or fancy mirrors.  A great defensive keep.  There have been some famous Frenchman imprisoned here: Marquis de Sade (twice and once for seven years) and Diderot to name a couple.  The kids asked why they were imprisoned here, and I was glad they did not press the issue on Marquis de Sade, as I did not want to get into his "outrageous behavior in a brothel".  For Diderot it was a bit easier; his writings appeared to question the existence of God, which the King did not appreciate.  There were several books on display that had been written by some of the very literary prisoners.

 

The chapel, built after the keep, was modeled after Saint-Chapelle here in Paris. 

What you might expect inside such a chapel:  incredibly high arches and centuries-old stained glass.

And what you would probably not expect... an art installation involving a LOT of plastic birds.  We missed the significance but still thought it was cool.  Only glitch at the chateau was a literal trip by Sully, and on the way managing to slice his finger on the can of fish.  Luckily, some superglue had made its way into the first aid kit in our packs.  A quick resupply of our bandaids from a nearby pharmacy finished the job and he was as good as new.

Okay, so Henry was not completely thrilled with the Chateau, but he was a good sport.  He was very glad when we were done and moved on to the Parc Floral, right next door in the Bois (woods) de Vincennes.  There was an opera singer performing here among the flowers as we walked through the park.

I did not sing, which is a good thing.  I did enjoy the flowers and the sun, which finally came out after a cold and damp couple of hours.

 In the park we visited the butterfly garden, and this guy was greedily imbibing at the nectar station.

 At last Henry could really kick back and enjoy his birthday at the adventure playground!  Here is another of Paris' "vine swing"/ zipline attractions.

Thumbs up on the giant slides in the background.  Too late we discovered a ropes/ real zip line challenge course in which kids (and adults if they are brave) wear harnesses and make their way through the trees quite high off the ground.  Our kids were crazy excited about this, so we will be returning to the Bois de Vincennes in the next few days to try it.

Henry's choice for dinner was pizza, which we found in Vincennes.  He had a calzone pizza with ham, no egg.  The rest of us had kebab pizza with the grilled lamb that you would find in a gyro.  Great!

After returning to Paris, we looked for a patisserie with un gateau for our birthday boy, without success.  Instead Nik foraged the Monoprix grocery store for this tart aux fraise and ice cream that did the trick, even though we did not have candles.  Yes, we sang in French!

Bonne nuit,

-E