Sunday, September 21, 2014

I am wide awake at 4:00, and edit html until 7:00; breakfast in the hotel, long soaking bath with a book, and am at 9:40 Dugommier for Kleber.

As I exit the train at Kleber the rain begins to patter down. Then it starts to rain in earnest. I run to 7 Auguste Vacquerie, the only time we have had rain since I arrived, and I get caught in a shower.

The Church basement is as I remember it; I sit in the back row; this is (or at least was) high-church Anglican, and who knows what they are up to now. I was at the first service held here in 1979 when the new building was opened, and I bet there aren't many who've passed this way and can say that! There were probably a hundred at that service and most of them are surely dead by now.

In typical Anglican form, we have 4 or 5 sheets/booklets plus a hymn book; there is no choir today, they are away singing at a wedding. It's a continual fumbling and rustling and swapping of sheets throughout the service.

The creed is sung to Merbecke, which I love and remember.

At the end of the service I sit and listen to the organ postlude, like the bulk of the congregation, but after that everyone else talks with everyone else, all chatting socially to keep up what has happened the past week, and I remember that well.

I am ignored, which doesn't bother me that much – I have no plans to stay for coffee or for lunch – but it does say something about any organization – church, Gilbert & Sullivan, canoeing club etc when no-one makes at least a small effort to chat with a New Face. Especially when that New Face didn't make his communion. You'd have to think “Got to be a story here!”, no?

I walk to and along Avenue Wagram to Courcelles to Rome to Pont Cardinet. My LEFT shoulder aches! And I figure that it's after noon and it's time for lunch.

I order a hot cheese salad (something different every day!) at a corner cafe which has a small bookshelf. I read a soccer tabloid while I wait, eat, and digest.

A huge storm comes up, initially shedding leaves and causing cafe waiters to bundle up the table umbrellas, then causing some patrons to shift as the rain comes down in buckets. I am, of course, inside watching through a protective sheet of glass.

I discover that across the road from my café, the station that people scurry through is not a Metro station but Pont Cardinet from St Lazare; a suburban-lines station and many people scurrying must mean trains on the run!

I take the SNCF to Maisons Laffitte (I'm always near a trip) and stumble into the world's biggest street sale. By chatting up two good-looking middle-aged ladies (it's getting easier) I find that it's the one day of the year (in Maisons Laffitte) when you haul all your junk out of your cellar and compete with everyone else in town who is trying to offload their junk. At the end of the day – they agree and laugh long – you haul all your junk back into your cellar and wait for next year.

I walk around the stalls but haven't the time to go to the end of each spider’s arm that stretches as far as my eye can see. And it is a spider that has spun an enticing web, for conversation value alone.

When I get back to Toronto I'll go through a short litany of “If only I'd … while I was there” and one item would be “If only I'd stopped at every stall (there were a thousand, at least!) and asked about one item. What a lot of conversations I could have had.”

I haven't quite worked this out yet: From Pont Cardinet I can get a SCNF train to Maisons Laffitte, and I can get an RER from Maisons Laffitte back to St Lazare, but the RER dives underground and don't stop at Pont Cardinet.

I sit on the RER to Disneyland; sitting downstairs is not good, all I see is sunken trenches & platforms, nothing to make me want to get off and wander streets on the way back, but sitting upstairs on the way back I see shops! Neuilly-Plaissance looked OK.

Back to Nation, Daumesnil, get the key, then a light 5€ supper from the local Boulangerie.

This time last week, sort of, I was thinking “This time tomorrow I'll be arriving in Paris”; this time tomorrow I'll be thinking “This time next week I'll be leaving Paris”

Bed and asleep by 9 p.m. A cold, grey, wet & windy day, but pleasant for all that

This Saturday and Sunday I've done what I should have been doing 35 years ago; it feels good.

My walk from Kleber to Pont Cardinet.

This map lends credence to the saying “You’re never more than 500 metres from a Metro station”

This should freak us all out. Sunday morning at Daumesnil, there's a train every two minutes at 9:30 a.m.

It seems that back in '99 a law was passed, stoop-and-scoop. Good thing.

I have noticed that people no longer dance along the footpaths. It used to be simply appalling. Gone too is the vast army of Algerian men who swept the dog poop into the gutters of running water.

We still have crews picking up litter, but there's not a sweeper on duty at all times on every stretch of footpath.

Again, check out the height of these trees on a busy boulevard in the heart (literally!) of the city. Why can't we have that in Toronto?

Gone too are the street toilets-with-ladies. You handed over a franc and got to use the toilet. Theory was the lady cleaned the toilet. Practice was she didn't always.

Now toilets are automated. The toilet bowl is washed, disinfected and dried after each use, and the floor is washed after each use. Automatically. In French, English, Spanish and Braille.

Here is what it looks like from the outside. The water is NOT from the toilet, but from a shower of rain an hour or so earlier.

What’s that I see in the distance? Sacre Bleu! It's Sacre Cour. Quick, hang a left and get out of here!

I took a zoom shot to make sure. I'm gone!

I have just walked past this crowd of five young boys, crossed to this side of the street and turned back to take a photo. The one in the striped shirt, holding up his arms and partially masked by the jogger, is the one who called out to me when I was about two arm's lengths away. “Hey, monsieur?”. I kept walking.

The trick is to engage you in conversation, show you something, and pick your pocket. It is SO tempting to empty my pockets into my shoulder bag, zip it up and discard the zipper tag, and see what they do. On the other hand there are enough of them to pummel me and take my bag. They are, however, unlikely to be able to reach into my pants, under my shirt, and unzip either one of the two pockets in my waist-bag.

Walking along Rue de Rome, away from Sacre Coeur and alongside the tracks from St Lazare that head north and west. At this time I thought it reasonable that there were no trains.

Tada! Of course there are trains. This is Paris!

What a pretty building.

Keep your eye on the building at the extreme left, too.

Now this is a narrow building.

Isn't it!

From odd spots around Paris I can get a good view, confirmation that I am in the valley of the Seine.

I didn’t know it until about an hour later, but that’s Pont Cardinet station in the left and centre of the photo.

I sit in the cafe at Pont Cardinet watching the rain come down.

And wondering about the people scurrying in and out of this non-Metro station.

Look at the rain splashing up from the footpath across the street!

MY kind of cafe!

There were eight cranes; I couldn't fit them all in.

It seems to me that in and around Paris the cranes cluster in groups of half-a-dozen or more. Vast spaces, then a cluster of red-tower cranes.

It is as if the economics say “Do all the heavy-lifting at once; accelerate the building of the structure, then we can free up the streets for street use again. In Toronto, a single tower crane operates 8 hours a day and keeps the street blocked for three years.

This might give a better idea.

There again, perhaps economics dictates that an entire block is razed, and what we have here is eight separate buildings going up, each with its own crane.

Sunday afternoon; trains to Maisons Laffitte every 20 minutes.

The train pulls out with me on board.

I have just emerged from the station at Maisons Laffitte and am thinking naively “Oh. A street market. How nice!

Flowers. How nice!

More stalls. Amazing!

What strollers are good for: load 'em up with baggage and leave them in the path of everybody.

All the way down this street as far as I can see, and even then, I can't see that far. I held my camera high above my head and hoped for the best.

And all the way down here. Same technique.

And all the way across this bridge out of the centre of town!

A train back to Paris every six minutes. Sunday afternoon.

Even when you are heading out of town, the street market stretches on.

And on, across the railway lines.

The solid bits are the areas around the station exit, nothing but stalls. The lines are my best idea of the extent down the streets, both sides of each street.

A Sunday-afternoon train.

And here we are at Disneyland. I didn't go in.

Two quick photos and I'm out of here!

Back at the hotel while I wait for my key I take a photo of one of the many green-feathered pillows lying around, with the guest book for comparison.

My out-of-town trips today – Maison Laffitte to the west, Marne La Valee to the east.

For later reference (Friday 26th) note Coulommiers, way off to the right-hand side.