In which we attempt to go to the Parc Floral

Last Sunday when we got home from the Cité des Sciences, I had an email from Caroline, suggesting that as we had been unable to spend any time together at the Cité des Enfants, we get together this weekend at a playground. I had mentioned the playground at the Parc Floral as being a particularly nice one, (certainly, it's a particularly large one) and so we agreed to meet there this Sunday afternoon around 1:30. Blaise decided that he wanted to walk it (about 3 miles from our house) and then take the train home, but the kids and I decided to take the train both ways, since I wanted them to have energy left for playing when we got to the park.

So, Blaise set off shortly before 1:00, and we agreed to meet inside the park at the playground, since he was fairly sure that he wouldn't actually make it there by 1:30. The kids and I got a few things together and then headed over to the RER station. Now, the best RER exit for the Parc Floral is at Vincennes, which is actually a zone 2 stop. (Paris is zone 1, and the zones increase in concentric circles as you get further from the city. Fontenay-sous-Bois is zone 3. Charles de Gaulle airport and Disneyland Paris are both zone 5, though in different directions. The cost of the ticket depends on how many zones you have to cross through on your journey, so a Val de Fontenay to Vincennes ticket is about 30% cheaper than a Val de Fontenay to Paris ticket. Clear as mud? Good.) Since Vincennes is a zone 2 stop, I wanted to buy the less expensive tickets for Sapphire and Ezio (I had some left from a trip to the doctor).

So, when we got to the RER station I glanced at the schedule board and noticed that we had about 3 minutes till the next train heading for Paris on the A line. Not a problem, buying tickets is a relatively quick process, and there was only one person in front of me at the ticket machines. Unfortunately, she didn't exactly seem to know what she was doing, because it took her a very long time to finish her ticket purchase. A glance at the schedule board suggested that I was down to about a minute and a half. I quickly selected a carnet (book of 10 tickets, about 20% cheaper than buying them individually) within the Ile de France (Paris region), scrolled through a shockingly large list of V stations to find Vincennes, selected tarif reduit (half price for the kids) tickets and realized that I had actually chosen to buy individual tickets. Cancelled the order. Start over, get to the payment screen and realize that I'm buying full price tickets. Nothing to do about that now as the board says that the train is approaching. Stick in my debit card. Punch in the pin. The machine prints the tickets with agonizing slowness. I grab them and we rush through the turnstyles and down the stairs to the track. As we run up to the train the horn sounds, the doors close, and the train pulls away. Eleven minutes to the next train.

We make the next train and ride it to Vincennes. We get off and go up the stairs (What? No escalator?) to the entrance, only to discover that our tickets won't work to get us out of the station. Though I try sending them through several times, they keep coming back as invalid. (Apparently this happened to Blaise last week as well. It would have been nice had he let me know.) Eventually we get out through the handicapped/stroller entrance when someone comes in through it. By this point it's well past 1:30, and we definitely need to hurry.

We walk along the outside edge of the Chateau de Vincennes (at one point the tallest castle in Europe, it was built in the 14th century by Charles V), and then up to the gate of the Parc Floral, where we are stopped by a guard informing us that the park is closed because of approaching storms. We wait, and the Gelmans come out, and a few minutes later Blaise walks up. Since the park is closed, and we've all come out here, we want something to do. It isn't supposed to rain for another three hours, so the park closure seems a bit premature. Andrew agrees to ride to the Monoprix with his two boys and see if he can find a ball so that we can play soccer in the field alongside the chateau. We agree to meet him there. Five minutes later it's raining hard, and the wind is whipping the rain into our faces. We take shelter in the shadow of the gates and wait for them to get back. By this time we've decided that when they come we're all just going to head to our respective apartments and put on dry clothing. In the meantime, we discuss the differences in attitudes toward school lunches between France and the US. (My kids were served fish with a sauce of mussels and shrimp for lunch today. And they ate all of it. Happily. Friday they had mussels in the shell to celebrate the convention on the rights of the child.)

Eventually Andrew and the boys returned, and we all headed back to the train station. This time we barely made the train back to Fontenay. We arrived back just in time to see the sun come out.