Villette

So yesterday was a big outside day - off to Villette!! First we took the metro to buy a soccer ball at Les Halles, and I realized how absolutely integral it is to our lives now. I will really miss the train, and how you pop up out of the metro into another world, whether it is only 3 blocks or 3 miles away. Anyway we traveled with our newly acquired soccer ball to Park Villette which is in the northwest part of the city. The park is flat, with 35 hectares of green space, and there are some museums there, but a lot of separate fields and playgrounds, all along a section of canal. I forced the children to writhe out into the sun like snakes emerging from a crevasse while I lounged about and read. Many many families were there, it was nice to see hordes of children. On the way out we stopped at one of the vendors and had churros - the funnel cake of France I call them. I tricked the children into walking home along the canal - probably about 2 miles - from Villette to Bastille. It was a beautiful day, and we wandered from one neighborhood into the next. Swarms of people were outside, either sitting next to the canal, or at a cafe, but not the tight tourist crowds of midtown, thankfully. We passed a flea market, and men playing boules, and playgrounds over the covered part of the canal. And of course we end by looking at the July Column at the Bastille monument through the trees, which has now become our familiar homing beacon.