Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

On Saturday, Suzie and I, craving the outdoors, took the Metro to the Bois de Vincennes, the huge mostly natural park on the east side of Paris.  It was an absolutely glorious fall day: Cool but not too, a blue sky with a few puffy white clouds, a warm but weakening sun.  The trees here are in the middle of turning color and losing their leaves, which made the walk a very pretty one.  We first walked past the huge Chateau de Vincennes, constructed in the 14th century.



Then we headed for a small lake, via a route which took us through a forest left completely wild:



The lake itself, small and manmade, had well-kept walking paths all around it.  A couple of pictures show how pretty the lake and the day were:





After walking around the lake and stopping for a coffee at the always-seeming-present park cafe, we took another route back to the Metro. This route wasn't quite so pretty; the bois is the home of a number of of sports-related facilities, including the French national athletic training center, and is also traversed by a number of roads. In addition, the walk back was long. We figured we walked a little more than 5 miles, which wouldn't have been a big deal to us, but for the fact that we'd both gone out for a run that morning. We were happy to get on the Metro and sit down, something we don't often say. (I followed this with an outing with someone from my class on Sunday, which involved more walking, so by the end of the weekend my feet had had it.)

This pretty excursion in the country was a great contrast to my outing with the boys a few days earlier, to the 2008 Mondial de l'Automobile, the world's largest automobile show, which was being held in Paris at the Porte de Versaille, just a short tram ride away from our apartment.

The exhibition was pretty much what expected, except for the fact that I've never been to anything so large in my life. It was huge. We stayed for almost 4 hours, and saw only 2 of the 7 exhibition halls. The other funny thing about the Mondial Auto was that it was in some ways almost a caricature of itself, as evidenced by these Jetson-esque young ladies; all the different car companies had their own fleet of hostesses dressed up in matching attire, ranging from elegant to ... well, to what you see below. (The best were the hostesses for the Smart cars, very cute in matching colored jeans and sneakers.)



The cars were pretty cool, even though I'm not really a car guy. In addition to all of the new the stock models by all the car companies (some of whom I'd never heard of), each also had one or more "concept cars," highly futuristic prototypes not yet in production. For example this, a car for the very thin:



Or these:





Lots of "green" stuff, too ... hybrids, all-electric, etc. One concept "green" car really was:



Ouch, it makes my eyeballs hurt. Actually, after a while, the whole scene started making my eyeballs hurt; too much light, too many flashes, too much glitz. I felt the same way I feel after I have to go into the Windsor Wal-Mart. Still, I'm glad I went, if only for the experience, and the kids got in for half-price.