Wednesday, September 07, 2016

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

My first little bus trip – from Poissy to the FNAC in Chambourcy by #8 bus.

I wake to find that we are 90 minutes from touchdown, so turn the movie back on and watch the end of the Quentin Tarantino thing. Remind me to avoid his films in future.

I am served a plastic tumbler of coca-cola by a stewardess who misinterprets my “coffee, please”, and I use the drink to wash down the sticky sugary tiny muffin that arrives in a box.

I suppose we drift over the tip of Cornwall, represented by cotton wool way down below, and then the engine noise drops and a serpentine river appears below us. Could that be the Seine? Are we that close

I think that I spot Poissy, it is the right-sized town on the right sort of curve, but we are way too high to be landing at CDG. The plane drifts on, the river unwinds below us, and then I do spot Poissy. It is unmistakable this time with the huge Peugeot-Citroën factory adjacent to it upstream, and SaintGermaineenLaye right next to it on its own bank of the Seine. I don't hear the wheels come down, but I watch the large flap come down and the vapour trail as the moist air condenses and streaks across the wing.

We land, the spoilers come up, then go down, my adrenaline goes up again. The engines roar in reverse and we peel off the runway to spend the next twenty-five minutes parked at various runways while someone else lands or takes off on a runway whose end we must cross.

Well, it can only get better as time goes on. Like Life.

We file towards Immigration and I remember that I am carrying my UK passport as well as my Canadian. I click my heels and join the line-up that contains only two people, and within sixty seconds, no more than that, I am scanned, my passport is scanned, and I am free to wander around France.

I make my way to the heart of the terminal and find that it is changed somewhat. The little kiosk with the lady who sells Navigo tickets has been replaced by a battery of machines. I observe that the machines don't take banknotes, but they do take credit cards, so I join a line and edge towards my destiny – which is to discover that the machine won't accept my credit card.

Off to another line-up in an office where the debit card is accepted, €73 is deducted, and you do the math: The Canadian Dollar is about €0.70, so think about $110 to travel around all of the Ilê de France. In Toronto $140 gets you only as far as Steeles Avenue.

I am back in heaven.

Off to the trains!

I stare at the platform map and look for Poissy until it dawns on me that I am on “Ligne C” at CDG, whereas Poissy is on “Ligne A”. There's nothing for it but to hop on the train sitting in the station, and off we go!

We don't get far before we stop in Terminal 2 station and I realize that this is where Air Transit dropped me off two years ago. No wonder I thought that today's terminal had changed – Today I was in Terminal 3 via Air Canada.

The train accelerates like crazy. No time is wasted in picking up speed, and we seem to fly, non-stop until Gare du Nord in Paris. Next stop is Châtelet Les Halles, and I make my way through the warren to Ligne A with confidence, my navigational memories fresh from two years ago.

And here we are in Poissy.

Because my flight was so early (9 a.m.) and check-in time at the hotel was so late (3 p.m.), and despite my having toddled around the wrong terminal for an hour or so, by the time I reached Poissy I was still way too early, so I set off for the Tourist Office.

I had a nice chat with the young lady there and obtained a map of downtown Poissy. And if I am any judge it is way out of date regarding which streets are one-way (for vehicles). Nice lady confirmed that the #8 is the bus for Chambourcy, and I balked her when she started to look up the timetables by telling her I was en retraite and en vacance, with plenty of time to kill.

Off then to the bus station on the south side of the railway station; I'll explore the northern bus station tomorrow. I wait for the #8 bus which, at this time of day, seems to be a single vehicle that runs around a loop.

I spot a Bus “i” information booth, and the nice lady there slowly and sadly shakes her head. They used to have a map showing all the bus routes in the city, but not any more. The world is turning into a hell-hole for people like me (rare, I know) who like to sit on the bus and follow the route on a paper map, sometimes leaping off when a fortuitous intersecting route appears.

Here comes the #8. The driver agrees to throw me off the bus when we reach FNAC, which is pretty simple because the large FNAC store is one of several in the big-box complex known as Carrefour de Chambourcy.

So here I am in Chambourcy. Only this time yesterday I was in Toronto saying “This time tomorrow I'll be in Poissy”, but I am in Chambourcy instead.

At each entry to every FNAC store is a security guy who asks to see inside your bag, and puts a store sticker on any item which might be taken to have been taken, if you know what I mean, illegitimately.

Poor fellow. He wants to look inside MY bag, and I am quite willing to let him do that. I have not yet booked into the hotel, so my bag contains a spare pair of dress pants, four shirts, four briefs, four pairs socks, a collection of Transilien and bus route maps printed from the web, cables for phone and laptop, plastic rain jacket, razor, toothbrush …

The security guy gives up around the time that I work out how to say in French “I've just got off the plane!”. He looks a little puzzled because there is no airport in Chambourcy, but lets me in.

I make my way to the plugs, cables and adapters section and pick out a nice little €9.99 model, pay for it, and wend my way back to the bus stop just in time to catch the sole #8 bus with, of course, my nice driver who recognizes me, and so back to Gare de Sud Poissy.

Because I was so bloody efficient and caught the same bus back, I still have two hours to kill, so I wander the streets using my memory of the layout of Poissy and soon find myself in the old town with its relatively narrow streets. It is 1 p.m., or “thirteen hundred” as I should remember to think, lunch time, and the restaurants are teeming with people who know each other, having a good time, while I don't want to be here at all. I want to be in my room, taking a shower, changing clothes and, perhaps, having a little nap.

But I shrug and find a quiet Italian-based place, take a seat inside towards the back, ask for a carafe of tap water and settle back to read the menu.

I am coming to hate menus in restaurants. Almost every restaurant (or diner or cafe) sports edible food, and I really would rather they just brought me something to eat. I'd eat it, honest!

I settle for Saumon Pavé, and the waitress asks if I'd like Pâtes with it. In my tired state I confuse myself and start to say no, because I am confusing the French “pâtes” with the South American, I think, Spanish for potatoes, and right now I don't want French fries with my salmon. “As a little garnish?” she begs. OK, I say, and the meal arrives with pasta, silly me. Pâtes. Of course! Pasta.

I eat it all up, and wipe the plate with a piece of bread; I'm not proud. What about dessert? I shouldn't. I'm too tired, but she is such a nice sweet young thing, so I settle for “Fraises Melba” because strawberries are so healthy, and Nellie Melba was Australian, donchaknow.

Let me tell you that in Poissy, in some of the restaurants, “Fraises Melba” is a rather large sundae glass (I can't claim it was a bowl) with strawberries nestled on a bed of two scoops of ice-cream (one rich vanilla and one strawberry) and the whole lot hidden, buried, entombed under a mountain of whipped cream. What a waist!

Still thinking of killing time I pull out my map of downtown Poissy and ask the waitress to show me on the map just where I am, or more correctly, we are. Sweet Thing can't tell me. She knows the streets, as in how to get to the restaurant when she is on duty, but doesn't know the names of the streets. She calls over her colleague who, after about five minutes, pins down the spot to within a block or two.

I am, as the French say nowadays, gob-smacked. How can you work in a restaurant and not know what street it is in? My gobsmackedness increases when the bill arrives with the restaurant's business card on which is printed ”3 Boulevard de la Paix”. I paixed up and left a tip, and slowly wandered the streets towards my hotel and checked in.

A view of one of the quaint streets in the old part of town.

The street with the Italian-like restaurant “Cosy”.

First item of business was to strip off my 48-hour clothes and take a shower. The shower-head fixture is broken, but the shower-head still works. I can live with that.

Second item of business is to empty my bag and hang my pants and shirts. Done!

Third item of business – plug in the netbook computer with my new adapter, and then charge up the phone using the USB cable.

Guess what? Wrong adapter!

In my tiredness and haste I have purchased from FNAC an adapter suitable for French people going to the USA, not Canadian people coming to France. It's not the €9.99 I mind as much as the disruption to my schedule.

I recall that right by Gare St Lazare in Paris is another FNAC store. There is one too at Montparnasse, but another interesting little fact is that Poissy has a non-stop SNCF train service to Gare St Lazare, way faster than the high-speed RER train which stops at every station and doesn't go to St Lazare.

SNCF/RER express heading west

So I trot back to the station and film a train coming out of Paris. My! But these trains fly!

A view of my hotel. Circled. Tomorrow I'll show you a movie of a train rocketing past my window.

Then I hop on the non-stop to Paris which stops only once and then dumps me at St Lazare. Out of the station and there's FNAC, so in I go, bag inspection is much simpler this time. Up the escalators and ask my way to the wall at the far end (it will always be the wall at the far end, so I don't know why I always wait in the slowest queue for information to ask the same question knowing I will get the same answer), and this time I make a careful examination of every adapter to find the one with the two circular French pins as the male part.

None.

I search again.

None.

I collar a young guy and persuade him to accompany me to the rear wall where he can assure me that this FNAC store does not stock what I want.

At this point I am convinced that this entire trip was a mistake. What happened to my grand plan of swanning into FNAC at Chambourcy, then having a shower, and a nice nap while the electronic gear charged up, followed by a leisurely stroll of the streets to find a quiet cafe?

I know what is going to happen. I'm going to retire to the hotel and sulk until my batteries go flat.

What to do? I am too tired to ask how I might best get lost looking for a different store. I fall back into St Lazare and join the crowd of citizens trudging home after work. When Quai 14 is announced for the Poissy train we all surge forward, some of us balancing the prospect of hopping on to the first carriage in the hopes of getting a seat, others heading way down the train to get a seat in the carriage that stops right opposite the only set of stairs that lead off the platform at Poissy.

Those of us who are really stupid get a seat mid-way, down the train, facing the direction of travel, on the side of the carriage that receives the full blast of the seven-o’clock setting sun, rendering all sight-seeing risible, if that is the opposite of visible.

Home again. I walk again the streets I walked at lunchtime to imprint them in my brain. The streets are strangely similar to Montrouge, where I lived for eight months so many years ago, and where I re-wandered two years ago.

I stop at an Express and buy for myself a positively disgusting set of foodstuffs in an attempt to cheer myself up. A slab of Emmental, a bunch of Muscats, a box of those chocolate-covered wafer sticks, a bottle of fizzy Fanta orange, and a bag of chips labeled “Bugles” and “3D” and also “Bacon-Flavoured”.

Another shower and it’s time for my French GTV lesson.

Turns out that there is an excellent film/program on channel 3 on the Ilê de France – my favorite topic nowadays – and I munch and watch and munch until about 11 p.m., when I pack it in.

Next Day