Thursday, September 22, 2016
Please take a moment to download and read my file Fully Funded Public Transit .
At 9:46 the SNCF slides out of Poissy. The plan is to catch the #26 bus from Gare St Lazare via Gare du Nord, Pyrenees, Gambetta to Nation. I will pass through the fringes of my old neighbourhood. From Nation on foot to Daumesnil-Dugommier, then #46 back to Gare du Nord. The train rockets through Maisons Laffitte, stops at Houilles for a minute, then on to Gare St Lazare which we reach at 10:06, twenty minutes after leaving Poissy.
I spend 14 minutes walking around St Lazare until I remember that the system here is logical, and that tells me where to find the bus, for this is the terminus of the bus. At 10:30 we start off to ride clockwise from ten o'clock to four o'clock around a north-east arc of Paris city.
I look out the window at the shops, the buildings, the people, and reflect that half the people walking on these streets were not born when I worked here. At 10:33 I take a photo of Trinité, like any regular tourist. At 10:40 I spot a bike lane, and begin to feel that the bus is in a lane reserved for service vehicles.
A gentleman my age sits besides me; there is some discussion about the "Arrêt" button not working, and when things quieten down I make a casual remark about how the tourist (me) boards the bus at one end and gets off at the other end, and never worries about the stop-button. There follows a conversation, naturally.
The man used to work for Phillips, like me, and we discuss the many nationalities and languages. He says he once worked with two Australians, so I know he never worked with me because I never worked with another Australian. Phew!
We roll past one end of the park Buttes Chaumont, and come to Pyrenees. This street would let me walk straight up to Place des Fêtes, but I stay on board. I visited my old haunts two years ago, and there is neither need nor desire to re-visit them.
A #96 labeled "Porte des Lilas" glides by us and I confirm my logic with a glance at my PDF map of the bus routes; sure enough, it is from Gare Montparnasse. That station is the terminus for all the 9x buses. I check the map again as a #64 glides by. Huh? #64 would take me to Daumesnil! I hop off #26 at the next stop and discover another #26 right behind us. Yes, we are "bunched", a rare event in Paris. The #26 behind us is near-empty, we have been doing the work of two buses.
On the #64 I follow my new route, and notice that we are going uphill - a good sign that we are on our way to Daumesnil
At 11:30 I am idly staring out the window and reflect on how odd it is that there should be TWO large roundabouts in this area of Paris, each with a huge fountain circled by Lions. Then the brain unfreezes and I consider the possibility that I have arrived at what I thought was "Place Daumesnil" but obviously isn't. It is Place something-else, but it is where I want to be.
This has been a slow journey of one hour across part of Paris, but a very good ride, because it turned out pretty well as I had planned. I am in my old quarter of two years ago.
I drop into a cafe and order a croissant, but they don't have one. The DO have a
And so now, at 12:08 I am fed, have over two hours to make the trip back to Gare du Nord. Shall I take the #46 to Gare du Nord (home of the 4x buses) or shall I just hop onto the metro at Dugommier and ride to Denfert-Rochereau and then take the RER straight to Gare du Nord?
I walk back from Dugommier to the hotel - exactly 280 paces, so my directions were correct - I said about a hundred yards from the exit.
Market day is tomorrow, and so this lunchtime the crew is out unloading material from a truck and erecting the verticals, horizontals and canopies that will make the market. Around about this time tomorrow the crew will be back to tear it all down and cart it off somewhere else. Then the cleaners will come in and hose everything down into the sewers.
As I walk up to Daumesnil I see a #29 bus labeled "Gare St Lazare" What?!!??? I check my map and sure enough - how did I miss that? I am smart enough (or remember enough) to work out a pretty good way of getting here, but not the best way. That's the sort of knowledge I would pick up if I lived here.
The bus stop sign says nine minutes to the next bus, time enough to wander off and take a few photos. I return, mooch around a bit and start thinking that it's more than 9 minutes, but then an eastbound bus, scheduled in 6 minutes, passes by, and it is bunched up by another (so they DO bunch up in Paris often enough!), and then our bus comes along.
All I need do is sit tight on this bus and I'll be there in plenty of time. And I’ll have a ringside view of the almost continual stream of shops that line the street on the ground floor of every building. Paris at times seems like one huge strip mall at ground level, with people living in the apartments above.
I note that when the bus stops at a traffic light, or to pick up passengers, the engine noise and vibration dies. The driver can edge forwards, presumably on battery power, but a serious attempt to go forwards kicks the engine back online. Perhaps this fleet is very finely tuned to save a small percentage of fuel costs (and pollution), which multiplied over the fleet would mean a significant saving. There are approximately 4,000 buses serving the Paris region .
This is the last burst of warm sunny weather and the sidewalk cafes are crowded at lunchtime. I marvel at the tiny circular tables that are crammed with everything you need, your plate, cutlery, napkins, bottles, glasses, cruets and sauces, bread basket. There is not an inch wasted or to spare. All this calculated on a spreadsheet, or is it a result of a hundred years of fine-tuning?
At 13:20 the bus stops, at a bus stop, and half the passengers get out. Discussion ensues, followed by raised voices. The bus is going to turn back; in Toronto we call this "short-turning", and we must all pile off and then push and shove to get on the next bus.
Man the barricades! The angriest passengers refuse to move away from the exit doors of "their bus", so the rest of us can't get off, and so the driver can't pull away, and so the following bus can't pull in to pick us all up. Storm the castle! Don't go down without a fight! Citoyens!
I walk to the front of the bus and get off and start walking in the general direction of West. My Toronto background says it is useless to argue, and you may as well walk. I have over an hour to spare and I can't be more than fifteen minutes walk away. I ask the first lady I meet and she assures me that Gare du Nord is straight ahead, about 25 minutes, and everybody on the #46 that flashes by laughs at the impatient Australian tourist who is going to go-it-alone.
I'm glad I decided to walk the rest of the way, he wrote, making the best of a bad job, because I see a canal, and walk over a bunch of railway tracks and theorize that they were coming out of Gare de L'Est and that I should turn left, which I did, and I was right. I love that feeling.
With an hour to spare in Gare du Nord, on a whim I decide to watch the turnstiles and am treated to a bit of theatre. One set of doors is opened and won't close, so people tapping their card don't hear the doors open. One lady, not hearing the doors, assumes that her Navigo card has failed to register (but it has registered, it just didn't need to open the doors), so she tries her Navigo card on the adjacent turnstiles and of course her card is rejected, because as far as Navigo is concerned, she is already in the system (and Navigo won't let you toss your card backwards so your buddy can use it), so she takes out a single ticket and returns to the first turnstiles, the ones with the open doors, inserts her ticket, extracts it, but once again she hasn't heard the doors open (because they are already open), so she takes her ticket to the adjacent turnstile and of course her ticket is now "used", and won't open those doors.
I want to yell down to her “Just walk through the open doors, lady, you are now in possession of TWO valid tickets", but I dare not.
I struggle to understand this business of electronic tickets for the high-speed Thalys trains. I received confirmation by email, but the hotel chappie couldn't print them out. I have the text details (ticket number, train, car and seat number) but I don't have that granulated square thing from the email. I do not have access to email in the Thalys office, but am told I should print them out. I tried that but it didn't work. So perhaps the hotel guy didn't know how? I agree. So just pull up the email and take a screen snapshot. But I don't yet know how to take a screen snapshot with my new smart phone. I feel trapped between two technologies.
The guy in Thalys can't print my tickets for me because this is what he calls a ticket-less system. I would like to point out that they are not at all “ticket-less”, but that they are pretending to be a paperless-ticket system, but that I am sure I'll need a ticket to get on the train at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. So they want ME to burn paper, but not them.
Apparently I should return to my hotel (one of my many travel weaknesses is that I don't pack a printer in my shoulder-bag) and hope a different person is on the front desk.
Or I could learn how to take a screen snapshot with my phone and save that as an image and pull up the image when I get here in the morning. And hope that that suffices.
My friends from the UK arrive on the TGV from England. My! But the locomotive is a noisy bugger compared to the electric locomotives here.
We say good bye, and at 16:54 I make my way out of Gare d’Austerlitz and walk across the Seine to Gare de Lyon, follow the crowds who, like me, are making their way home. An RER Poissy train is sitting on the platform (alright, ALONGSIDE the platform) so I jump on and find a seat and we pull out. Through a gap in the fittings I can see the illuminated map, with the Poissy spur of only two stations lit up. I relax and we slide into Poissy at 18:02.
With a short sigh I recommence a collection of Euro coins from different countries.
The little Rosiere sends out a fresh bloom every day.
The morning sky is crossed with vapour trails.
The bus parked outside the hotel has what appear to be draft versions of decals.
No doubt about the meaning here.
Note that the first thing you do is greet the driver with "Bonjour!"
At 9:30 I walk to the station.
The next train leaves in 13 minutes. Trains leave every 20 minutes in off-peak hours. Note that if a train leaves Cergy le Haut every 20 minutes, then trains will serve Maisons Laffitte every ten minutes.
Or I could catch a train to St Lazare in nine minutes.
So that's what I'll do. St Lazare and then ride a bus, or two. Here I wait on the usual (!) platform for St Lazare.
The planned start of my trajectory around part of Paris.
The RER train (which I won't take) has huge lettering on the side. This is what I think of as an "RER-owned" RER train, as distinct from an SNCF-owned RER train.
SNCF Normandy train heading in to Paris through Poissy.
Snap Quiz: How many carriages were there in this train?
Unlike the pylons in Melun, these modern jobs are strong enough to maintain tension without weights and pulleys.
Man! am I bored. Another shot of my one-night-stay hotel.
We head into St Lazare. La Defense makes a cameo appearance.
As I walk down the platform at St Lazare, I may not yet know where to get the #26 bus, but at least I know where not to go.
A problem for me: So many places to visit. And this is just the Ile de France lines, and this is just one station.
I spot a typo, top left hand corner, a train is posted as leaving at 16:17.
I become a tourist walking up a side street. As I walk a #26 bus comes towards me. A moment later I reason that if a bus just went THAT way down a one-way street, it makes no sense to keep going upstream.
I turn around to see my #26 bus, albeit coming from the east, making a right-hand turn.
Quicker than you can say "I haven't had my ice-cream today", I set off to track that bus to its lair.
Past the front entrance to the station ...
This lady and I are walking along the station facade. That bus has to use this alley as a turning loop.
A minute later and I am standing at the bus stop at the starting point for the #26 bus's eastern journey, looking back. I have just walked in from the right-hand edge of the photo.
Yes. This is where I wait for the #26 alright.
Only two more minutes to wait. Or was that seven?
My proposed trajectory in yellow, modified by my actual trajectory in orange.
I will be traveling this close to where I lived in the 19e, but I did all that two years ago and can find no reason to go back and walk around there again.
Other buses come and go. Where is my #26?
Buses appear from the south and zoom off. Where is my #26?
People arrive by Metro and walk across the square, ignoring the suitcase monument.
After four minutes my wait time has been reduced from two down to three minutes (!)
This is a common practice in Paris. While we are renovating the building facade, we will cover the scaffolding with a facade that shows you what the finished job should look like. How neat!
Enfin! My bus arrives. Here we are at Trinité.
I think we are in a service-vehicle lane. Beyond the traffic lane is a bike lane.
I admire the new bus stop signs. Being elevated they are easier to spot from a distance.
The western end of the park Buttes Chaumont.
I love the buildings here. They would remind me of the English city of Bath, had I ever been there.
I have hopped off the #26, and this is its mate which has bunched up because we were late starting and have been doing the work of two buses. Also the back door is broken and keeps refusing to open.
I can follow these bus shelter maps from a seat in the bus. The "You are here" is marked in this case towards the right-hand end; we have traveled from Gare St Lazare at the left hand end.
Once on the #64 I find myself staring idly out of the window at a familiar sight!
I jump off the bus, navigate the square, and see a bus headed for Gare du Nord. That will come in handy in an hour or so.
Place Félix Éboue. I had been thinking of it as Place Daumesnil!
My hotel.
The courtyard.
With its bamboo.
The green cafe is not open, and looks as if it closed permanently. Sad!
As I take a light lunch I notice a bag just like the one I have at home in Toronto.
The gutters still are cleaned with water here. A tiny fountain bubbles out on the other side of the railing.
I stroll down to Dugommier and prepare to stroll back up to Daumesnil.
A familiar view and walk. This is what I saw on my first day here when I popped out of the metro station.
Tomorrow is market day and the crew are setting up the stalls.
They carry huge loads of metal poles on their shoulders. It is hard work.
Each pole is dropped into a keyed socket ion the pavement, then given a quarter-twist to lock it in place.
Look! A #29 that could have brought me directly here from St Lazare!
And across the street, is that a #46 heading in the other direction?
Yes it is. So my bus stop must be just a little way ahead, or a little way behind, but a little way ahead is definite, whereas who knows which street it arrives at to enter the grand Place Félix Éboue.
Did you easily spot the bus-stop sign, dead centre of the photo? Everything in this shot is typical; reading from left to right, the man is striding towards the cafe to meet his pal for lunch, the old man is walking home with the baguette and tomatoes, as ordered by his wife; the young couple are strolling back to the college which is on the far side of the street; the man in the blue shirt is walking back to the office; the group of three on the right are discussing the implications of the mayor's decision to close the Rive Droite and give it over to pedestrians
The sign tells me that the #56 will be here in nine minutes. It was just so.
What would Paris be without a shot of the Eiffel tower?
OK. Here’s a zoom shot. Look in the dead centre of the photo, in between the tree and the buildings on the left. happy now?
This is the only homeless guy I saw on the streets in all my time here. I guess that the local cops in Poissy keep a tight rein on things in that town.
What looks like a massive blob of bitumen-chewing-gum is in fact an eight-inch ankle-wrenching depression in the street caused by the bus wheels at this stop.
The spot where the kerb-side wheels damage the road has already been re-laid.
That reminds me, I must look up the history of Gare de Reuilly .
There go two bunched #46. The leading bus is hiding behind the third tree from the right.
Half an hour passes. The #46 has dumped us out. I start to walk and am passed by the following #46. Aaargh!!
Hotel ibis! An old friend.
My walk to Gare du Nord gives me a great view of the canal ...
... and the locks at the other end.
I am walking along Louis Blanc. Louis Blanc was a metro station on my way home from work the day I lost all my identity.
There are several Rue de Faubourgs around here. make sure you get the right one!
If you are a model-like beauty with long skinny legs you get to toss your cigarette wherever and whenever you want. Note to self: Must watch another episode of AbFab tonight.
How can I not love this beautiful city?
So I took a zoom shot before I walked along the street.
Here are the tracks issuing north-east out of Gare de L'Est
People driving Eiffel Towers are not allowed to make a right turn here?
Here is another Faubourg
Two more bunched #46s. Is this national Bunching Day in Paris?
Fact is I walked too far North, and must now walk through Little India down the east side of the station.
The buildings make it all worthwhile.
Here I am in the large bus station on the east side of Gare du Nord.
Another great sign. I can go left to get to where I want to be "Grandes Lignes"
Gare du Nord is huge. These two photos don't show its real size.
Remember that there are three or four subterranean levels, too.
Inside the warren; tiers of escalators carry people all over.
More top-down programming; at this point you confirm that you are heading not just "towards the metro", but "towards lines 4 and 5 of the metro"
I spot the Union Jack sign that I marked out yesterday.
What other station gives you polished hard-wood floors?
Beautiful!
The lady with the orange shoulder-bag is frustrated. She has just "blown" her ride on her Navigo card.
The lady with the orange shoulder-bag is even more frustrated. She has just "blown" her ride on her one-shot ticket, too.
My meeting with my friends went well. We traveled together from Gare du Nord to Gare d’Austerlitz. I have worked out that I can just walk across the river and hop on RER line A from Gare de Lyon straight to Poissy.
I start across the bridge. Gare de Lyon is essentially that clock tower away in the distance
A zoom shot. I'm getting good at this.
To the south, a metro train pulls out of Dugommier.
To the north another metro line chugs along.
A barge approaches, so I wait and watch it pass underneath me.
Almost there. I take one more shot of the tower, then walk down the escalator into the warren that is Gare de Lyon.