Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

After over a year of living in Paris we are still finding new things in the city every week.  I shouldn’t be surprised; I have only made a dent in the list of things I want to do in Chicago and lived there for 12 years.  While I thought I knew Paris pretty well before we moved here, living here has made it clear to me that had I barely scratched the surface of the city in the past. Two years is not nearly enough time to get to know all of the little corners of Paris, but the futility of the task doesn’t stop me from trying.

A month or so ago we headed up to the nineteenth arrondissement to take an afternoon walk through the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.  The park is the city's third largest and was created on the site of a former quarry in the 1860s as part of Haussmann’s modernization of Paris.  There is a small lake in the center of the park with a rocky island in the middle.  The island is connected to the rest of the park by two bridges and is topped by the Temple of Sibyl, a copy of an ancient temple near Rome.  

We crossed over a suspension bridge to the island, stopping along the way to take in the view of people enjoying the park on a gorgeous fall afternoon.

After climbing up the island to the temple we found ourselves able to look over the entire park and see across northern Paris to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

We followed the paths that meander through the park, passing a few cafés, a waterfall, playgrounds, and rolling hills covered in grass and trees.

As we left the park and started back down the hill towards our neighborhood, we stopped in at a bakery for some pastries and enjoyed our snack with a view of the Eiffel Tower from afar.