Parc des Buttes Chaumont

I have black sandals. Many other women in Paris have black sandals, but a casual survey of feet on the streets at the end of the day usually reveals my sandals as the only ones that are covered with white dust. During the recent warm spell, when summer footwear still prevailed, I found myself wondering even more than ever how everybody else managed to keep their shoes so clean. The answer turned out to lie in the fact that my tourist habits still persist, despite my living in Paris for a while now.

When looking for a place to sit and eat lunch or to spend half an hour absorbed in a book, I tend to head for the popular parks. The Place des Vosges is just a short walk from our apartment, with its neat, well ordered square and fountains. Likewise the Tuileries can be reached in just a few metro stops, or for wanderings further afield there's always my favourite Jardin de Luxembourg. These are all high-profile parks renowned for their beauty, close to the city centre and filled with postcard-worthy vistas aplenty. They are all also filled with sandy paths. Once you set foot in any of them you're committing yourself to a comprehensive foot dusting and the mad dance of those whose tootsies are being tickled by incessant bits of gravel. A little bit of dust on the toes is worth it, of course, to see the triumphs of formal landscaping, but for a cleaner foot and something a little different you need to head out to the nineteenth arrondissement.

The Parc des Buttes Chaumont lacks sand and gravel, being constructed instead around a series of dramatic escarpments and rock formations. It has a steeply-cliffed island topped by a grecian temple folly, from which you can survey the lush green hill slopes and the lake below, whilst simultaneously being on eye-level with the high rise housing and office tower blocks all around. If you gaze into the distance you can see, nestling between tall buildings, the Sacre Coeur, bone white and shining from behind the hazy clouds of city smog. There is the odd flower bed here, neatly laid out, with an information card to detail the plants held within, but the avenues are not broad and they are often enclosed by long tunnels of overhanging mature trees. In the heat of the day it is easy to find shade. In one cool, damp corner a mighty cascade of water roars down a rock face. Elsewhere walkers pick blackberries or stop at one of the restaurants, some of which seem to open late into the night.

The Buttes Chaumont is a park of the imagination with distinctive touches. The dramatic lines of the suspension bridge linking the folly-crowned island to the shore contrast with the quaint cliffside fencing. Knotted and carved with graffiti, the fences appeared to be twisted, curving tree branches cast from concrete, clinging to the cliffs amidst the sharp shadows of the taughtly stretched bridge cables. Everywhere you can see steep pathways and steps cut out of the hills, leading you up and down through the trees as you traverse the park, making it seem like a real escape from the city, a haven of somewhere different even though the traffic noise from the bounding streets is never really far away.

No fancy metalised lounging chairs here, and no wooden boats to sail on the lake. There are sturdy green wooden benches and tables on terraces for tapas and beer. So you can sit in the shade and contemplate the city spread out below you, in the distance and rising up all around you. You can listen to birdsong and the occasional car horn whilst watching the planes and feeling quite close to the sky that they inhabit. Yes, you can do all this at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont and still return home with clean shoes.