What do you do on a hot July day when you want to be near a park and some water? Why, go to Bercy, of course!

I discovered Bercy Park (Parc de Bercy) a few years ago and love it for its elongated lawns, diverse gardens and close proximity to the river Seine.  Midway through the park, there’s a cool and peaceful arbor overlooking a small pool. Here’s where I like to sit and write or read a book.

On the other side of the river from Bercy Park, there’s an open-air swimming pool called the Josephine Baker.  It’s on a barge.  Connecting the right and left riverbanks and leading to the pool is a wide footbridge (photos up top) called the passerelle Simone de Beauvoir.  On this particularly hot day, the breeze blowing in off the river as you crossed the bridge was very welcoming. 

Back to my flat at the end of the afternoon for a glass of chilled rosé and melon from Provence which, as I write this, brings to mind John Keats’ poem, Ode to a Nightingale.  My father, after a few glasses, used to recite this to us around the dinner table –

…Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim…

mmmmm….tastes like summer. Bye for now.