Margaret and I went to have a picnic in the park on Monday. We staked out a lovely place underneath some giant trees and were having a grand ol' time, as seen in picture below.
It even began to drizzle a little bit, which was nice because we were dry under the trees and got to sit and watch the rain fall.
Now, all the parks in France are completely fenced and gated, and most have signs on the gates that basically say 'this park will close in case of storm'. I always assumed that meant, you know, a storm. Maybe they are worried about people being in open fields during tornadoes or something. Never mind that we haven't seen any weather more intense than a soaking rain since we've been here.
It turns out that what those signs mean is that the park will close in the instance of any sort of liquid falling from the sky. After about 20 minutes of rain, a park ranger started driving his scooter around all the paths in the park, honking his big bad scooter horn constantly. He eventually came up to us and told us that we needed to leave immediately out the main gate!
I have no idea what they are trying to protect by closing parks when it rains. You aren't allowed to sit on the grass or play sports in most parks anyway. I would say that it is to save the park rangers from getting wet, but they all have shelters to stand in. Maybe it is just for job security, to justify having a person staff the gate of a park that is free to enter.
Anyway, we enjoyed the rest of our evening at home.
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| The park ranger in the distance, off to honk his scooter horn at other innocent picnic-ers |
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