Last Day in Paris

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Sunday 28th April

Since I was defeated yesterday in seeing all the places I had wanted to see, due to the rain, and since my train to Brittany was not until after lunch, I decided to hop onto the metro on Sunday morning and visit as many of those places as possible, before returning to check out and go to Mass at 11am.

I got off the metro at Tolbiac and headed into the Quartier des Peupliers. Some very pleasant streets and gardens, especially near the Square de l'Abbé Georges Hénocque.

I continued on into Floral City. What a beautiful and picturesque quartier! Many of the little streets are named after flowers, and the gardens and streetscapes are very pretty. It was hard to believe that one was in such a big and busy city. Being Sunday morning, there were few people about, so I was able to take some photos without disturbing anyone. Really an extraordinary area.

Close to Floral City is the Parc Montsouris, an English style park with a lake and several lawns surrounded by trees and shrubs. A very beautiful park, plenty of joggers were about by this time of the morning. I had limited time, but managed to walk around and enjoy some of the park before heading back to the hotel. Also here I stumbled across part of the Petite Ceinture, the old and now disused railway line which circles Paris but was superseded by the metro. Parts of are now walking paths, and it includes a number of tunnels, one of which goes under Parc Montsouris. I had heard about it on the website Atlas Obscura, which features interesting and unusual places to visit in cities all around the world.

After checking out I took the short walk to Mass at Notre Dame des Champs in Montparnasse. An imposing church, quite modern by European standards, construction having started in 1876 (Just one year before the commencement of the construction of St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney).

After Mass I headed to the Gare Montparnasse and boarded the TGV to Rennes. Very fast and very smooth. You can see the maximum speed indicated in a picture below. At Rennes I changed onto the local train for the trip to Guipry-Messac to meet my host family. They met me at the station, and we walked to their house.

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