Have you heard about the Japanese tradition hanami? Every spring, Japanese residents gather in parks to admire cherry blossoms. Incredible white and pink caps of flowers announce the arrival of spring and transform the landscape for several weeks. Given my love for nature, seeing cherry blossoms has become almost an obsession. Unfortunately, the Land of the Rising Sun is far away, and it is difficult to find tickets so that the dates coincide with the flowering period, which varies slightly from year to year. Fortunately, with the help of my beloved Flicker, I managed to find a breathtaking (I’m not afraid of this word) right next to Paris. cherry tree garden. All that remained was to wait for spring and good weather. I was lucky - everything coincided just perfectly. I went to four times So Park in the south of Paris, one of them just for reconnaissance, literally a week before the start of flowering. Almost a thousand frames were taken - many of them were almost identical, but it was simply impossible to stop. Usually nature photographs are dominated by green and blue shades, but this time your monitors will go crazy with the abundance of pink. If you notice at least a particle of Japanese contemplation in yourself, then welcome to the cat.

Park ensemble So ( Sceaux) is located approximately 6 km south of Paris, so in fact it can be considered part of the French capital. This is a spacious park in a classical style with a castle, spacious lawns, figured trees and bushes, fountains, ponds and a large canal, like in Versailles. I could write a separate post about So, but today I will tell you only about two small kindergartens, for which I actually came here, and for the first time.

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Gardens with cherry trees (or groves, as they are called in French gardening slang) are located along the Grand Canal. These are square plots of approximately one hundred by one hundred meters, fenced with bushes and trees. The first one has white flowers and is much less impressive. I accidentally learned of its existence by overhearing a conversation between an elderly couple.

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As you can see, even at the peak of flowering, the tree branches seem bare, although there are quite a lot of white flowers.

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But the most interesting thing begins in the neighboring grove. Behind the trees there seems to be a pink fire raging.

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We enter the territory and the first thing we do is pick up the fallen jaw.

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Millions, billions of flowers hang like pink foam on cherry trees. Here it is, hanami in French!

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The color pink is rarely found in such quantities in nature, so the brain initially refuses to process the information coming from the eye receptors.

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Sakura is an integral part of Japanese culture. The fragility of cherry blossoms is a metaphorical representation of the fragility of human life.

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Sakura flowers bloom for only a few weeks and fall off before they have time to wither. In the same way, any beauty in the world is ephemeral, and you need to have time to enjoy it while you have the opportunity.

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The Japanese, Chinese and other Asians come to So Park from all over Paris and the surrounding area to sit with the whole family under the cherry blossoms and remember their homeland.

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If on weekends in the morning the grove is still quite free and secluded, then closer to lunch it becomes difficult to find a free place.

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Everyone rests in their own way. Someone is reading.

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Someone is meditating.

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Someone is sleeping.

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Someone plays sports.

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Someone is learning horse riding.

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Someone is practicing using a sword.

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And someone is playing ball.

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Naturally, everyone writes on Twitter and Facebook, inviting friends to see the unprecedented spectacle.

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And of course, a lot of people take photographs.

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Or take pictures.

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Large groups gather under the bushiest trees for a picnic and informal communication.

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And pensioners do Asian exercises in the morning with some exotic name - for example, tai chi.

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The centuries-old tradition of picnics under flowering trees began with the ume plum blossom, but over time, sakura stole all the attention.

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Some children are too young to understand the unusual nature of trees.

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And others are already reaching out for beauty with all their might. Mostly girls, of course. Whatever you say, women are more contemplative than men.

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Great place for romantic dates.

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Even a trendy bar on top of a skyscraper overlooking the city lights can hardly compare with a garden of cherry blossoms.

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If you want to please your significant other, invite her to a picnic in So Park in early April. This is also a great place to propose to a girl - it’s hard to find a more romantic place.

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Or simply collect rose petals to decorate your room and create a romantic atmosphere at home.

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It is difficult to imagine how these lush, fleshy petals fit into the buds.

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On one of the trees one could simultaneously contemplate white and pink flowers. A separate experiment by a gardener, probably.

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It's hard for me to find words to describe all this pink madness. Let me just say that at the moment this is the most vivid (in every sense) impression of the year.

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A real Garden of Eden.

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I wish each of you to see something like this at least once in your life. Remember that beauty is short-lived, but its sources are varied and numerous. Looking for beauty in the world around us, feeding on it and being inspired by it is one of the paths to enlightenment.

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Have you already seen cherry blossoms? Have you been looking for pink flowers in spring? Have you been to Japan during the Hanami period?

How to get there: from Paris by train RER B to the station Parc de Sceaux, then walk (about 20 minutes).

Very soon Paris will be enveloped in a pink cloud of cherry blossoms. In general, to see Paris in bloom, all you have to do is go to Instagram. Believe me, all self-respecting bloggers will try to post their excellent photo of blooming Paris. But if you plan to see this spectacle with your own eyes, then save this article, in which I share the most popular and also secret places of blooming Paris.

If you want to catch the cherry blossoms, then come to Paris from March 25 to mid-April. Of course the weather is unpredictable this year, but let's hope for the best. Read the article to the end! At the end, the most beautiful place where sakura blooms awaits you.

Popular places among tourists:

1. Near the Eiffel Tower.

2. Square next to Notre Dame.

3. Small (Avenue Winston Churchill) and Grand Palace (3 Avenue du Général Eisenhower).

4. Next to the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore (37 Rue de la Bûcherie).

5. Jardin des Plantes (57 Rue Cuvier).

Secret places.

1. Square Gabriel Pierné (5 Rue de Seine).

2. Jardin Tino Rossi (2 Quai Saint-Bernard).

3. Square des Saint-Simoniens (151 Rue de Menilmontant).

4. Père Lachaise Cemetery (16 Rue du Repos).

5. My favorite is Parc de Sceaux. How to get to this park? You only need 40 minutes from the center of Paris on the RER (B) train. The easiest way to start your journey is from the metro stations: Luxembourg or Saint-Michel. Go to Parc de Sceaux station. A train ticket costs no more than three euros one way. It only takes 10 minutes to walk from the station to the park.

Park So is a huge territory (you can’t even imagine how huge it is... I would say gigantic), on which there is also a beautiful castle. In spring, more than 100 sakura trees bloom here. You can have a picnic here, as well as a fantastic photo shoot. Just remember that you need to bring everything for a picnic with you, since there are no shops nearby. On April 15, 2018, a holiday dedicated to cherry blossoms will be held. So don't be surprised to see girls in beautiful kimonos. You can get detailed information about the work of the park

Not yet filled with tourists. By the way, if you want to see the cherry blossoms, then April is the most suitable month.

Main events in Paris in April

Easter

Catholic Easter in 2019 is celebrated on April 21. Be prepared that they will not work on this day and the day after the holiday. The main gifts for Easter in France are chocolate eggs and bunnies.

Fountains

In April, city and, most importantly, musical fountains begin their work. Carnivals and various performances are also held here on Saturdays and Sundays. Don't miss the extravaganza of water and fire!

Foire du Trone

One of the most famous fairs in France. It has been taking place for 194 years. On it you will find a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, and 350 other different attractions!

A park

A true French amusement park, not inferior in scale. Here a large number of water attractions and performances, so it is closed in winter. The summer season begins on April 15, which means you can have fun with the whole family or a large group!

Have a nice holiday!

Have you heard of the Japanese tradition of hanami? Every spring, Japanese residents gather in parks to admire the cherry blossoms. Incredible white and pink caps of flowers announce the arrival of spring and transform the landscape for several weeks. Given my love for nature, seeing cherry blossoms has become almost an obsession.

Unfortunately, the Land of the Rising Sun is far away, but I managed to find a breathtaking - dare I say it - garden of cherry trees right next to Paris. All that remained was to wait for spring and good weather. I was lucky - everything coincided just perfectly. Usually nature photographs are dominated by green and blue shades, but this time your monitors will go crazy with the abundance of pink. If you notice even a particle of Japanese contemplation in yourself, then welcome!

Park ensemble So ( Sceaux) is located approximately 6 km south of Paris, so in fact it can be considered part of the French capital. This is a spacious park in a classical style with a castle, spacious lawns, figured trees and bushes, fountains, ponds and a large canal, like in Versailles:

As you can see, even at the peak of flowering, the tree branches seem bare, although there are quite a lot of white flowers:

But the most interesting thing begins in the neighboring grove. Behind the trees there seems to be a pink fire raging:

We enter the territory and first of all we pick up the fallen jaw:

Millions, billions of flowers hang like pink foam on cherry trees. Here it is, hanami in French!

The color pink is rarely found in such quantities in nature, so the brain initially refuses to process the information coming from the eye receptors.

Sakura is an integral part of Japanese culture. The fragility of cherry blossoms is a metaphorical representation of the fragility of human life.

The Japanese, Chinese and other Asians come to So Park from all over Paris and the surrounding area to sit with the whole family under the cherry blossoms and remember their homeland:

If on weekends in the morning the grove is still quite free and secluded, then closer to lunch it becomes difficult to find a free place.

Everyone rests in their own way. Someone is reading:

Someone is meditating:

Someone is sleeping:

Someone plays sports:

Someone masters horse riding:

Someone is practicing using a sword:

And, of course, many people take photographs:

Or take pictures:

And pensioners do Asian exercises in the morning with some exotic name - for example, tai chi:

The centuries-old tradition of picnics under flowering trees began with the ume plum blossom, but over time, sakura stole all the attention.

Sakura flowers bloom for only a few weeks and fall off before they have time to wither. In the same way, any beauty in the world is ephemeral, and you need to have time to enjoy it while you have the opportunity.

Some children are too young to understand the unusual nature of trees:

And others are already reaching out for beauty with all their might. Mostly girls, of course. Whatever you say, women are more contemplative than men.

Question one. When to go to Paris. If you ask it to Google, it will give you quite a lot of options and opinions on this matter. It all depends on what weather you prefer and what you want to see.

Someone dreams of blooming chestnuts and sakura, someone wants to try these same chestnuts roasted, someone thinks about the sweet sales periods, and someone wants to extend such a short St. Petersburg summer. Or maybe you want to attend some cultural event?

I was in Paris at the end of May, July and mid-September - each time, except July, was good in its own way.

The end of May is a time of stunning aromas of rose bushes, green meadows and very warm weather. But the roses are already fading, so if you dream of stunning photographs against the background of the same blooming sakura or delicate pink buds, you need to go early - in the second half of April-early May.

But if you want to run barefoot through the French meadows, wet your feet in the Seine, especially outside Paris, and inhale the rich aromas of sun-warmed roses, then the end of May is it.

There are a lot of tourists at this time, but if you know a few things, you can still avoid the tourist crush.

July is scorching hot, crowds of tourists are rushing around Paris, and the Parisians themselves are busy packing their bags to go somewhere to Provence for a month. August is the period when the city is occupied by tourists, and the townspeople themselves occupy the Mediterranean coast. Don't believe me? Look at the hotel booking website in January for the remaining rooms on the coast - almost all of them are already sold out at the end of July-August.

Therefore, you definitely won’t be able to drive me to Paris during this period.

September is beautiful - of course, no one guarantees you hot weather for all days, and it can rain, but for those who are accustomed to St. Petersburg September (in the absence of Indian summer), Paris will seem like a paradise in terms of weather. In 10 days it rained only twice, and then, after 11 pm, half of these 10 days we walked in light jackets, and half in T-shirts.

There are fewer tourists, but there are no greenery and flowers. In general, it seemed to me that planting in parks and gardens is done in such a way that at any time of spring and autumn something will bloom - some varieties of roses have faded, but others have opened... And such a feeling of constant flowering.

By the way, to the question of where to look at the weather forecast, I will answer - just not on gismeteo.ru. This wonderful site promised us winds and daily rains in Paris for 10 days of September, but I wrote above what actually happened.

My friend and I used this site http://france.meteofrance.com/ to find out the forecast for the entire trip, and then the weather in the cities we traveled to from Paris.

I haven’t traveled to France in winter yet, I think that everything is ahead, but some of the articles and photographs of travelers who were there in December are very impressive, the city is preparing for the holiday and it can be felt in every frame, real magic.

Therefore, to answer the first question “when”, you need to find the answer to the question “what” =)

And forward to the second question.

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