Despite a good nights sleep, I was a bit tired today and set a modest goal of around 3 miles. It was a little different running on a Tuesday morning as opposed to Sunday in Paris. We stayed in a business oriented district, which is quiet on weekends with little traffic but very busy during the weekdays. I got out at 7:00, however, and the traffic was not too bad. My plan was to run at a nice park, Parc de Monceau, that we stopped at yesterday.
I decided warm up by running to the Arc De Triomphe before hitting the park My gps watch beeped and fussed a bit like yesterday due to the tall buildings blocking the signal. There was also some clouds and haze leftover from rain last night. Like yesterday, the temperature was in the low 50’s. The GPS calmed down when I reached the open area near Parc de Monceau.
Keep on knockin’ but you can’t come in.
I noticed the French are quite serious on locking up their parks at night. I tried one entrance to Monceau and it was padlocked. I then took a detour around the park to find the main entrance. On the way, they had some artists display tents near the gate and the security guard didn’t really like me running through it. He kept saying “Misseur, Si Vous Plait something-something-something” over and over. I decided to play the ignorant American (Yep, I’m a natural) and kept running between the artists tents to the main entrance. He didn’t tackle me from behind, so I guess my violation wasn’t serious enough.
The park is beautiful and I actually took some pics to keep you people (cough...cough… Nathan…cough…cough) happy with my assistant, of course. Enjoy!
There are lots of sculptures and other artsy stuff scattered all over the park.
In addition to the excellent landscaping of the park proper, you also notice really nice architecture on the buildings which border the park. This is not a low rent district; that’s for sure.
The surface of the trails (either hard packed gravel or clay) is also excellent for running and there were many other runners/walkers navigating the outer perimeter trail, which covers about 0.6 miles. The interior trails can be used for variety, and the only negatives are that some are narrow and have the slower folks on them. I ran 2 moderately hard laps around the perimeter before an easy cool-down through the main trail that bisects the park.
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