Suburbs of Paris

I always enjoy visiting Maya and Adam.  They don't live in the centre of Paris, but instead in the southern suburbs of the city closer to where Adam works.  I find that I'm able to get a very different experience staying with them than what other tourists see.  It's a more genuine experience of life in Paris and it's always relaxing and extremely pleasant.

One of my favourite things to do when visiting them is to go to Parc du Sceaux.

I've mentioned this park many times before, but it really deserves as much attention as possible.  It is one of my favourite parks in the entire world.  It's beautifully landscaped, and offers so much space for people to enjoy.  People flock to "famous" parks and gardens in Paris like the Tuileries and Versailles, but I think that Parc du Sceaux is better than both of them.

The size of the park is what impresses me every time.  To be able to maintain such an enormous park to such a high degree of quality would cost a fortune.  The pictures I take only capture a small portion of the entire park which also includes vast areas of forests and enormous man made lakes.

Maya had decided to go for our walk that day wearing a pair of flip flops.  It was a cold day and Adam and I had both put on heavier jackets.  Within the hour, she was complaining about how cold her feet were and so Adam kindly gave her his socks.

We walked up to the chateau which looked like it had some construction on it.  Instead of looking at construction work, we found ourselves in front of the set of some filming.  Turns out that Parc du Sceaux was being used as the filming location for a new drama called "Versailles" which would be coming out soon.  With it's grand architecture and vast expanse of gardens, this seemed like the perfect location for Versailles to be recreated.

The rest of our time was spent just walking around town.  We went to the markets, had lunch in the cafes.  It was just a nice and comfortable time without any particular rushing around.

On one evening, Maya and Adam got a babysitter and we all went out for dinner at a restaurant they had discovered.

It was located in an old French barn that had been converted into a fine dining restaurant.

The food was rich and traditionally French.  I ordered a grilled piece of foie gras for my entree and then followed it up with pan seared calves liver for my main.  I was feeling extremely full, but still decided that I wanted dessert and so I ordered the creme de marron for dessert.  It would all prove to be too much for me later, but it was a good dinner.  We sat by candlelight as we ate our fill and drank the wines on offer.  I hadn't been to any of the famous sights at all on this trip to Paris, and I didn't care about that at all.