Monday, September 12, 2016

Please take a moment to download and read my file Fully Funded Public Transit .

From Poissy to Versailles, Porchefontaine, Pont de Sevres, Garches, La Defense, Nanterre, Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, then back to Poissy, just to show that it can be done, even if “by accident”

A major problem this morning. When I reach the cafe there is someone sitting at my table. Madame Sylvie leans forward and I give her a conspiratorial whisper that, Goldilocks-like, “Someone is sitting at MY table”, and she grins. Makes me feel good to raise a chuckle in a foreign language. I am in a better mood than usual because Marie-Laure has told me that a room has come free for Tuesday.

I was thinking of leaving town early and spending all day Tuesday and Wednesday in a different town, but now I can stay, I can continue to devoting my days to Poissy and its neighbourhood.

The Ile de France is a white society. The majority of adult people with dark skin walk by with their heads down. Well, so do white people in Toronto, but they are clutching a paper cup of coffee with one hand and digitizing their smart phone with the other. Here it is more of a “down-trodden” look.

The children play together, and youths congregate in twos and fours and sizes well-mixed, and blacks, to use an unpopular phrase, come into the cafe, but at any time, ninety percent, or more, of people in the cafe of a morning are white.

I have noticed too the impact (after 35 years) of cell phones on cafe society. I'll swear that in the past a solo drinker would strike up a conversation with the person next to them; the cafe was a place of congregation and society. Today the solo drinker whips out a cell phone and says something like “I'm on my way there” or some similar lie.

For me in the cafe, I have an aura of deafness based on my poor comprehension of the language in the melee of the spoken word. My head is down, I am studying Le Figaro, and can fail to detect a question directed at me through the babble. I only detect such questions if my head is up and I make eye-to-eye contact with the speaker. A bit like sign-language speakers needed to be eye-aware of their colleagues and friends.

Unless I see, I don't hear.

I read about line 17 of the Grand Paris Express. I rode line 14 two years ago, and am saddened by the French ability to decide to do something and then do it, as distinct from Toronto's ability to decide to do something and then fund a committee to discuss it.

Today I ordered a chocolat chaud, but had forgotten how to drink a chocolat chaud. I imbibed a good three-quarters of it finding it insipid, bland, and made a decision not to order one again. Ever. Then I came across a near-solid mass of fluid chocolate at the bottom of the cup. I am supposed to STIR the thing when I receive it, to mix the strong chocolate in with the weak milk! Doh! Mister Stupid at work here. Trouble was that the top of the chocolat chaud was so artistic that I hesitated to touch it, let alone stir it.

A rough map of my travels today. The map is a little misleading and doesn't look like much for four or five hours of travel, but it involves many miles of twisting narrow streets with, in truth, too much to record as photographs and would for the most part be yet-another-beautiful-house-seen-through-a-bus-window, but magic before my eyes.

This is why you should always take your phone adapter with you on holiday, along with a plastic spoon, fork, and knife. So that you can wedge the air-conditioning slat to stay blowing over your smalls, when you find that one Laverie is reluctant to launder underwear and socks.

The street-side greengrocer is closed this morning. Many shops are closed on Mondays. But it might be closed because today is a market day.

I resolve to walk home by the square every morning, to see if the market is open. If so, I will buy my carrots and apples. I miss my daily carrots and apples. They are a great way to carry water and fibre when on tour.

I am unsure why I took this photo, but you have to look at it anyway. It can't have been the building in the far distance. Nor the cars. The sky is blue and we are offered another great day late in the summer.

Notice the apparent lane-way in the foreground. As I set off this footpath I enter a bollarded region where cars can drive and park, separated from the street by another narrow footpath. It makes sense. There is just as much space taken up with parking, but traffic (the two cars above) is not held up by someone edging into a parking space.

The separated area can also serve as the area for a street market three days a week.

Now I remember why I took that photo (and this one). My notes read :The area is both quiet and open and light. But "both" is not the correct word, right?

On my way back to my hotel. The man in the foreground is waiting for this ride to work. In the background people stream off the train and towards the Peugeot offices. A bus has made its way past my room and is turning in to Gare Sud

There they go, poor souls, shackled to an office desk all day, while I ride unfettered around the region.

I start my day on the 9-express. I have consulted my list of yesterday and attack the first bus listed that I see in Gare Sud. We will glide at top speed to Versailles along the auto-route.

Here we are passing a stationary bus.

Just another pretty street, more like a lane for North Americans, but a place of great charm here.

There are far too many good-looking buildings to photograph. Here is one of them as a token effort.

I rode this route on the 14 to Maule last week. A major bit of construction is under way on the road, but they are at work; it is not just a parking spot for orange cones and “We'll come back in a fortnight”. The traffic light controls the one-lane flow on the curve.

It's hard to spot in this photo, but the centre light is displaying an amber “6”, counting down to zero, so drivers of buses can determine just how much time they can spend catching up on email on their smart phone.

The bottom light will not go green. It will show amber, as in “proceed, but with much caution”.

This area was unpaved a few says ago. Work progresses. When I get home, they'll still be thinking about work on Gerrard Street, I know.

And here we are taking the exit for the Auto-route (top left corner of my map)

Vroom-Vroom! At high speed, up hills, I think it is, and down dales.

Vroom-Vroom! At high speed, up hills, I think it is, and down dales.

I think that we are in the little town of Noisy-le-Roi. If not there, then somewhere else.

Arboretum de Chevreloup. A tree nursery?

Every little structure, even a gateway, is fit for a king, in Versailles.

We enter in style in a grand parade of cars. Over to left we are approaching another avenue of boxed trees. I am not at all certain now that I like this. They look cute, no doubt about it, and I suppose that trees counter trimming by instituting photon-gatherers wherever they can, but there is an air of the trimmed poodle about them..

This is an unimpressive shot of an impressive war memorial. Go back to the previous photo and you can see this memorial dead-centre of our lane, away in the distance.

We drift through the streets of Versailles, heading towards the chateau.

And there it isn't! That's a small part of the entrance to the chateau. At least I can tell people that yes, I saw the chateau at Versailles

We continue to trundle. Where we will end up I know not, but I know that there will be more buses.

Sure enough, off the bus, first thing I see is a bus map of the region.

This is a shot of the lower-right corner of the bus-map. Count the number of different buses that come and go from Versailles!

I took a shot of part of this local bus terminus. Why?

I am “here”; the chateau is to the left; my plan is to exit right ASAP.

For those of you still driving cars, gas here is 1.253 per litre. That's Euros, so think about $1.80 per litre.

I have hopped aboard my second bus of the day, a route “B” I think to Porchefontaine.

Same deal, narrow and interesting streets.

And the usual fun as we squeeze past one of our buddies.

At the end of the road is a railway bridge or embankment, and if only you had looked at this photo thirty seconds earlier you would have seen an RER train toddling through Gare Porchefontaine.

This is the view back along Rue Yves de Coz. I am about to walk under the railway bridge to Avenue de Paris I wonder where that will take me ...

There's the bridge, now to turn left.

This is not a good sign. I am obviously still too close to swarms of tourists.

I actually walked to this bus stop and asked two charming young ladies if this was the direction towards Versailles They said yes, happy to make a tourist able to find his way to The Sights. I thanked them and walked across the street to this bus-stop.

Sorry! This bus-stop. It's the one in the previous photo that I walked across to.

The sign tells me that the next 171 bus arrives in zero minutes, the one after that nine minutes later. I could grab a coffee and catch the next bus. But I don't.

Here is my third bus ride of the day, the 171 from Porchefontaine to Pont de Sevres.

We zoom towards Pont de Sevres past rows of lovely trees. Why can't we have trees like these on out bus routes in Toronto?

Same question as above.

The House of the Setting Sun.

I really wanted to take a photo of the four lads talking away in front of me. Up to the age of ten, children speak very clearly, and I think to learn the pure language one should work in a day-care centre. By age fifteen kids are trying to be adults, and are using adult language, but with awkward variations.

Another inconsiderate passenger, just doodling on a smart phone. Doesn't she realize that I am on holiday and deserve lots of free space around me to take the best blurry photos possible from a speeding bus?

This fat man with a bulky backpack could live quite happily in Toronto. There he could as easily block the exit doors of the buses for several miles.

Can you guess what river this is, again?

Here I am in the bus terminal at Pont de Sevres. I lived near here in a colleagues apartment for a few months in 1979. A vague thought crossed my mind that I should hop on the subway and travel one stop, but once I got there, what?

I spent a good twenty minutes here ...

… taking photos of the bus station.

I had thought to take the 169, but another bus came first so I hopped on that one.

Here is one of several stripmaps in one of several busshelters. So many routes on offer! I know that I am in the southwest part of Paris – eight o’clock if you think of Paris as a clock-face – and this map shows BoulogneBillancourt and Pont de Sevres on the lefthand side – that’s where I am now – and Balard on the righthand side, so the bus route cuts across a peninsula of land formed by the meanderings of the Seine in the southwest corner of Paris.

And speaking of meanderings, doesn’t that previous paragraph have just about the most hyphens you’ve ever seen in a paragraph?

In the meantime I took another photo of the bus station. “Look at me, everybody! I am a bored and boring tourist!”

Bus number four – the 426 to the hospital in Garches. We start off by running through a lovely little park. Park St Cloud, I think.

Then we meander through the side streets of St Cloud.

Monday and many shops are closed. Sometimes the boulangeries open only for breakfast time and supper time, but a cake-and-chocolate shop will remain open all day.

Here I am at Hôpital Garches waiting for the 360 to La Defense.

I know that you think I have nothing but praise for their public transit system in France, so here is a complaint.

I have the same complaint about Toronto:-

The bus will arrive from behind where I stand. I will be sitting in the bus shelter The bus-bay terminates where I stand (not the angled kerb in the lower-left corner of my photo).

How will I see the bus approaching?

A secondary complaint: How come a bus driver hasn't radioed or phoned in that the garbage can needs to be emptied. Paris and its region is generally kept so tidy that this one bin screams in agony.

Here I am, sitting on the seat. I have placed my orange bag near the edge of the shelter in the hopes that the driver will guess a passenger waits inside.

And I step outside to show how the bus bay and shelter are rendered invisible from each other by the advertising on the end of the shelter.

There is a side -story to this. A young lady (there are so many of them nowadays!) sat next to me and agreed that the entire setup was ridiculous. Then an older lady sat down, another lady joined us in the shelter. At this point I decided that there were enough passengers around to stop the bus, and that I could take a little photo-walk, so I rose out of my seat – and all the women rose too so as to be able to beat the old man to the bus. Problem was, I didn't get up because the bus was coming, so they were all standing around wondering what to do next. Snap! Snap! Snap!

This is where I am heading now, north-easterly to La Defense

Well, I will be, if the #360 bus ever comes. Here is a shot of one of about a million buses that went by the box trees outside the hospital, but always in the other direction.

We are off. Past the market square in Garches. Les Marches des Garches?

I hope you are not tired of lovely buildings; I am not.

Or modern ones.

We rolled past Fort Valerien and the American cemetery. Four crew-cut French youths go on, well built physical specimens. I have to remember that these men, this age, were officers in war-time, and died in service.

We roll through Suresnes, the fenced yards are typical.

And the slightly larger buildings herald our entry into La Defense.

The complex is immense. The bus station and RER and metro occupy several layers underground, and work is being done on the bus ramps. The path is tortuous.

This rather large arch looks like an imitation of the Arc de Triomphe about a mile or so east of here.

I still haven’t worked out if the large red structures are functional – gantries to effect repairs – or whether they are part of the artistic whole. I guess that that makes them artistic!

Advertisements are everywhere for the Galaxy 7.

Newspaper reports on the withdrawal of the Galaxy 7 abound!

Oops

More towers. La Defense was a big deal here forty years ago.

This is the maw, well, one of the maws, into the underground mall.

At the foot of the escalators, as always, the regular plan of the area, plan of the network, everything you need to know.

And, of course, a second set of escalators to take you down to another level, complete with overhead signs that you can read while you are on the escalator. No need to block up the corridors while you conform your travel.

Then of course, there are more escalators.

This is a furry view across the complex, going from side to side.

I asked a uniformed information officer for directions and she sent me off to the information booth. Closed.

So I worked out which vast corridor to use, all by myself. It wasn't that hard.

Here I am on the #258 out of La Defense. And this is a concrete road barrier.

It is so easy to feel at home here, what with all the orange traffic cones and lane disruptions.

This bus sports an on-board map. Here's another complaint: I wish all buses were standard, with map racks as you board the bus, strip maps on the sides, overhead digital displays in a common format, ...

The #258 has dropped me off at a Round Point, and I am waiting now to catch the #259 (DO pay attention!) to St Germaine-en-Laye. The day is hot and I am tired, sweaty and gritty. But very happy.

Check out the blue sky!

I am here! Waiting for the #259.

Strip maps in this shelter too. I try to help an old couple who are confused about the change in routes that came into effect September 1st. I have an advantage over the locals; I have nothing to un-learn.

We run along the Seine again, this time near the Ile de la Loge. This area appears to be a popular expensive grill and restaurant locale for Sunday dinners.

A rough guide to this section of the trip.

The view of the river is shielded by trees. We get a quick glimpse and then its back to greenery.

The little bus stop posts carry a ton of data.

And I am unloaded in Saint-Germaine-en-Laye. I have a different view of the chateau from that of a week ago. Back then I was too tired to walk around the chateau, whereas today I am too tired to walk around the chateau!

Back home after my supper at the Istanbul.

Note the man crossing at the crosswalk. Note the bollards as vehicles approach the crosswalk. Note that the leading bollard has been stood back up after being bent over.

This part of the left-turn buses-only lane is a traditional dropping-off place for train passengers. It is common enough to see two cars parked here, trunks/boots opened up, suitcases and bags and other luggage being extracted, kisses and hugs, and cars backed up and honking back to Boulevard Victor Hugo because the cars can’t get by in their own lane.

The street theater is marvelous!

My peregrination for this day.

Next Day