Six Days In France: An Afternoon in the Parc du Buttes-Chaumont

Cineastes will know this as the park where Eric Rohmer sets the second act of The Aviator's Wife, when Anne-Laure Meury upstages everyone, on- or off-screen in the film. I've wanted to go there since forever but never got round to it.

You can take the 7 line to Botzaris and appear right at the corner, but I took the 11 line and got off at Place des Fetes. Take the escalator to street level and, on a Sunday, you will emerge into a busy local market. The area is working-class and the market fits it: I had a goat's cheese and salmon crepe from a stand there and didn't feel hungry for the rest of the day. Walk down the Rue du Crimee to the park.

I think there's a loi de 25 juillet 1856 that requires all the residents of the nineteenth to spend at least an hour in the Parc when the temperature is above 70F - I imagine town hall employees banging on apartment doors saying "Au Parc Messieur, Medames!. The last shot is outside the park, it's the Petite Ceinture, an abandoned equivalent of the Circle Line.

And so my time in fairy-land ended. The difference between this and the train out to Charles de Gaulle could not be greater. Or the cab ride from Terminal Four to my house. Or the next day at work. People wisely left me alone.