Buttes

We began the day with lunch at Pure Café, which Maggie recommended.  It is the café featured in the move Before Sunset, and she spent quite a bit of time there during her year in Paris. We both had the prix fixe meal, which was some kind of fish fillet, which was absolutely delicious.  The café was great – very much a neighborhood place (in a fairly obscure neighborhood) with no hint of the tourist trap.  On leaving the café we both noted that the name of the street sounded familiar, not realizing until we walked another block that we were standing in front of the apartment where we stayed on our 2006 trip.  I had forgotten what a great neighborhood that was.

We hopped on the metro and headed for our destination of the day, the Buttes de Chaumont park which is located in the 19^th arrondissement, in the northeast corner of Paris.  It’s a fairly obscure destination for tourists, I think, although it is apparently very popular with the locals.  This day we had the place almost to ourselves – although it was a pretty day, it was cold. As so often happened on the trip we thought about how gorgeous this would be in the summer, but then thought about the crowds and were happy with our trade off.  The park is enormous – I don’t think we came close to covering all of it.  What we saw was beautiful, and there were plenty of signs that spring is on the way.