Wednesday, September 21, 2016

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

So, into the cafe with my paper and this morning I get a handshake from one of the regulars. This might be my last day here (in the cafe). I am accepted as a regular, albeit a temporary regular. I spend an hour reading the paper with a Double Alongé, and then rise to tell Madame that if she is not working Saturday I'll not see her again, and thank you. (Madame Sylvie was there on Saturday, so I did get to thank her again)

I cross the street and order two bunches of roses for delivery, borrow a pen, and sit outside and write a short message of thanks in French on one side of each card, and a longer message in English on the other. This is a double-edged sword. The English version (and my shoddy hand-writing) will probably force someone to be brought in to translate, and with a bit of luck the card will be handed around to many more people for interpretation, and so many more people will be aware of my gratitude to the citizens of Poissy for making me be, not feel, at home. See also my comments on Melun from later in the day.

I drop off a bundle of coat-hangers at the laundry, but decide not to drop off my pants. There was some confusion over the delivery date last time, and I have no window for error in collecting my pants. I don't want to leave without them.

On my walk to the cafe I reflected on these past two weeks. I have possibly ridden on more (different) bus routes than any driver who has driven me, and more than any citizen of Poissy. I have possibly visited and walked more towns in the region than has any citizen of Poissy. I have probably had more weird conversations in these two weeks than any other citizen of Poissy. Of course, all those statements are debatable, and I would have trouble verifying them, but there is a strong chance, say 90%, that I am correct, and on that basis I have to declare this trip a success. I wanted to visit a single town and learn about it in depth. I have done that.

An item in Le Figaro highlights a bunch of women who have decided to take control of the town out of the hands of the yobbos who cat-call the local girls, girls as young as 13. One of the women is quoted as saying that these words do more damage than anything physical. Could be. Then my parents were lying when they told me "Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me".

Creil, I think that was the town. I never did work out how to pay extra to get to places like Creil and Malsherbes.

Another couple of phrases, one I remember from my days in Fontenay-Aux-Roses. "Voila! C'est Moi!" says Madame Sylvie, an abbreviation of "C'est moi qui vous remercie". Also I hear her announce to someone who has just walked in "Voila! Un p’tit cafe?" and the newcomer replies "Exactement".

In other exciting news, a new split has introduced itself into my shoulder bag. Is this now truly the end of this useful satchel? Also I read about someone or something making a bee-line for something, and immediately thought of the navigational skills of bees who, with the bee-dance communication, waste little energy in collecting energy.

Today's experiment: How quickly can I travel partway across the region? I will travel by train from Poissy to Melun and then back again as an experiment in timing. Should it be Melun or Montereau? I liked Montereau with the two rivers (Seine and Yonne), but there again it should be interesting to check out where I initially planned to go, so Melun it is.

I hop on a #50 bus at Cep at 12:15 and start thinking: I can get to St Lazare by SNCF or directly to Gare de Lyon by RER. The SNCF will be faster, but then I have to cross Paris. At Poissy station I see that the RER leaves in 10 minutes, the SNCF in 20, so I choose the RER.

The train is almost spotless. A single candy wrapper mars the floor. Once I get to Gare de Lyon I am faced with a choice of traveling to Melun by RER or by SNCF. And what to do in Melun? Well, one goal is to visit the tourist information centre.

Google maps tells me 86 Km, 64 minutes by road with tolls, and the crow-flight distance is 63 Km.

At 12:30 the RER train slides out of the station in brilliant sunshine and we are on our way. I open my window and bathe in fresh air. As we whoosh past trains going in the other direction I reflect that to scale, if model railways had the same separation between tracks and carriages there would be frequent derailments.

Alongside the track are neat piles of concrete sleepers or ties for the track repairs to be done this weekend. They look so neatly piled at intervals, and I reflect on the calculation must be done. The cost of an overrun or an under-run must be severe. If you deliver too many sleepers, then a crew has to come back out and pick up the surplus, one at a time, and that means closing the line. If you drop off too few, than someone has to beg and borrow from somewhere else. Either way you would want to count to be exact. It takes our train 22 seconds to roll past a rake of trucks loaded with new cars from the Citroen plant.

By 12:46 we have been traveling for sixteen minutes, and already four (!) trains have gone past us heading out of town. The RER is a smooth ride with no rail joints, so an opposing train is a surprising Whoosh! and then silence again. At 12:47 we slide past Gare Nanterre University and dive underground. We will not resurface until we leave Gare de Lyon. In the tunnel the train stops and since trains here are electric, there is dead silence. The diesel-powered GO trains would have a residual noise flowing over and around us.

There is a NELY on the other track - Boissy-St-Leger - and I vow to work out the naming system for trains. We are on OKRE. I marvel at the clarity and simplicity of the platform signs. I am using parentheses but in the signs the symbols are wrapped in a circle:-

(M) 1 (T) 2 (BUS)

“If you get off here you can switch to line 1 of the Metro system, line 2 of the Tram system, or too many buses to list here”.

This time I know that there are trains leaving from two different levels - the underground RER platforms and the ground-level SNCF platforms. besides that, there are three different RER routes from Gare de Lyon to Melun. In Charles-de-Gaulle-Etoile we see:-

(R) E (M) 1 2 6.

“You have a choice of one RER line and three Metro (subway) lines”.

At 13:05 we glide into Châtelet-Les-Halles and I see:-

(R) B D (M) 1 4 7 11 14

If you consider that I am on a train on RER line A, then eight railway lines, each double-tracked, cross here. To be sure they are not stacked one level on top of another, but there must be an awful lot of negotiation as the lines cross.

At 13:08 we are in Gare de Lyon, just 38 minutes after leaving Poissy. I hop off the RER train and stare at the platform's electronic sign. An RER train to Melun will glide into this platform in less than two minutes. It is a no-brainer and I hop straight back on to the next train, which leaves, as advertised, at 13:10.

I stare and reminisce as we trundle through the 12th arrondissement; there are those two chimney stacks ... we ride over the bridge, over the roads I walked on my last Sunday here two years ago. Sigh! By 13:17 we are at Maisons-Alfort. I hear an announcement "Mesdames and messieurs, blah blah blah prochain arrêt blah blah", so I have no idea whether we are non-stop to somewhere or what. What the heck. I am on holiday.

A beggar-woman goes by with a sulky little boy and I wonder whether the little boy is whining because his mother drags him around on trains begging for money from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. If so it's a hell for the little boy, being used as change-bait. At the far end of this carriage a child about four years old has been crying, and now begins screaming in that hyperventilated voice where the breath is drawn in involuntarily. It sounds awful. The mother does nothing to calm the child, and passengers begin to look nervous. Who will get involved? After about five minutes the child is physically exhausted and has no energy left for crying, only for breathing.

We roll through Villeneuve-Triage without stopping. In these SNCF cars, the announcements are made over a PA system, there is no display. (The RER cars have the brilliant lit and brilliantly texted rolling digital display), then we stop at Villeneuve-Saint-George. Incredibly, I see mother whop the kid on the side of the head(!) and the kid starts its hyperventilated screaming again. Where are the SNCF police when you need them? It is 13:25, we are not yet sixty minutes from Poissy.

Two years ago I wrote down a set of useful phrases for beggars, and haven't used them yet. Perhaps this is the time to start. "AwJeezOiDoanNoWordAbahtItMite" and "DoanNoTherLingoMite" and so on. Ortawerk!

At 13:29 we pass through Vigneaux-Sur-Seine and at Juvisy pull in to a crowded platform, as if it were market-day somewhere, which it certainly is. I am on train ZUPE. We skip Viry-Chatillon and slide into the tunnel through the river bank at Grigny-Centre This train ride is almost a milk-run. DEPA slides in alongside us and then continues on its way into Paris. We stop now at every station, including Evry (hah hah!) and at Le Bras de Fer where I used to work thirty-six years ago.

At 13:52 (see how the time is being eaten up now?) we stop in Corbeil. I did on one night only leave Le Bras de Fer after work and stay overnight in Corbeil. I don't know why or how I did it, or how I found a hotel and negotiated a room.

At 14:00 we are at le Plessey-Chenat and I see the locks.

At Gare de Lyon I could have got a faster train, but I would have had to go up one level to check the signs and then come down again. It was just so much easier to step off the first train and step onto the second train two minutes later. Think about that: Trains heading south-east every two minutes through the RER platforms at Gare de Lyon.

I might have researched online, but in Poissy I had no idea what time I’d be finished shopping, and so couldn't have planned a specific trip.

In the distance I see the towers of Melun. We roll along the river; it would be hard to find a more lovely spot to wait for a train. And at 14:23 we pull into Melun station. It has taken us almost two hours to cross the inner part of the Ilê de France, only 30 minutes from Poissy to Gare de Lyon, but this second leg is disastrously slow. Our average speed was 33 Km/hr (if we were a crow).

I am sure I could have made a faster trip had I chosen a different train from Gare de Lyon instead of being lazy and just taking the next train on my platform.

I mooch around the station to get my bearings and at 14:30 head off on foot to the tourist bureau, about a 30-minute walk away. As I head north across the bridges and through the town, unmarked and marked police cars flood the area and a helicopter arrives at a low-level. Some sort of alert is going on at the station. I am well out of there. Perhaps someone has said that they've seen the man with the orange bag who is murdering the French language.

Now its not like me to complain, as you know, but someone moved the tourist office and didn't tell anyone. All the maps say it is on the corner of Rue Carnot and Saint Aspaice. I double-checked (and photographed!) the map right outside the station. But the tourist office is not there. The tourist office is tucked away in a corner at Rue de Alleé du Marche (and that word "Alee" tells you straight off that it is not a big street) and a bigger street whose name isn't printed on the map! It takes me thirty minutes of trudging around the area to locate the office, and then it was by going into a Century 21 Real Estate store. Three cheers for Century 21 Real Estate.

There are no hotels in Melun town centre (population about 40,000). Try to imagine having no hotels between Spadina Avenue and Parliament Street, and nothing from Lake Ontario all the way up to Bloor. You're coming into town for a baseball game? There's a hotel about two miles up the road; best Of Luck; You're Welcome.

So why am I looking for a hotel in Melun, when I have had a great stay in a good Hotel in Poissy, where I am based? Because back in February when I began looking at towns, I chose Melun. Melun is only 30 minutes from Gare de Lyon (if you choose your train wisely) and Gare de Lyon is well-connected for all of Paris and a large part of France. Melun is big enough to have lots to see and so on.

Then I found that I couldn't find a hotel. I took a week off to let the computer and the internet wires cool off a bit and then looked again. "Odd!" I thought. After a couple of months of indecision I switched to Poissy which claimed 30 bus lines and two hotels in the downtown core. One, it turned out, is a place for bedbugs to stay, but the other is top-class and I will stay at the ibis chain in future visits to Europe.

So the goal for today's trip is to see what happens when I arrive on foot and ask about hotels on the ground, in the Tourist Information Office. My analysis is confirmed. When I couldn't find a hotel six months ago, it was because there are no hotels. I and the internet are right.

The lady in the Tourist Information Office told me it was a year ago that they moved into this superb and spacious building. My tourist map has been scribbled on, so I return it to the rack and get another. It too has scribbled marks on it. They all do! Both sides! Some poor sod has gone through all the maps and circled in ink the old and new locations of the Tourist Information Office. Something to do, I suppose, during quiet times when tourists can't find the office, leaving you with nothing to do.

I walk back to the station, check the schedules (Mine will be the 16:59, please) and have time to go have a Croque Monsieur in the cafe by the station., which I do, and as I sit I reflect on this cruddy state of affairs in Melun. I start by using the cheaply photocopied hotel brochure that the staff at Tourism gave me. It lists three hotels, one of them in map reference F6. I scour that map for Rue Louviot and can't find it at all on the map. (Later, I confess, I see that the reference F6 is on the inset on the other side of the map, and is about a 15-minute walk from the old town core and about 35 minutes walk to the station. There is, no doubt, a bus ...)

Melun would be a good town (and region) to explore, but the accommodation would have been awkward.

Outside the cafe I check the You-Are-Here map and puzzle over why someone wasn't sent out to stick a sticker on these things saying "We've Moved!". And erected a special sign at the old place saying "We are not here anymore". Also more than one brown-arrowed sign would have helped.

Sigh!

I could catch the 16:59 FACA or the LOCA, DUPE, VUPE or JOPE. Two very excited and bubbly young ladies really do think I have stereo in my head and that I can accommodate two simultaneous high-speed conversations about trains. One practically drags me through the barriers with my Navigo card. If I RUN! I can just catch the train. There it is, see? On Platform 2. You have sixty seconds to run along this platform, fall down the stairs, run through the underground and ...

I stop and say "I am on vacation", and she ushers me back through the turnstiles. Now I can't get back through (because the system thinks that I am still inside, and that I’m trying to pass my card back to a friend) and while she is explaining this to me, another visitor rolls up. Go ahead, I say, I'm on vacation. I can wait. The other lady's card has the same problem as mine, so my friend starts again at the beginning The little "R" next to a train signifies Rapide and the little "D" Doesn't. Or maybe it stands for "all stations Deservis" Who knows?

16:53 Here I am on Platform 2 waiting for my 17:17 express to Paris Gare de Lyon. I will try to describe again just how good this train system is.

I am facing two trains which are sitting at their platforms waiting to depart. Behind me are two other trains waiting to depart. There are FOUR trains sitting at platforms in this station.

No wait! There's more!!

16:55 (two minutes later) a third train slides in front of me ("...and baby makes three")

16:57 the far train, one of the original two, slides out of the station

16:58 the near train, one of the original two, slides out of the station

16:59 A through express whooshes through on some platform behind me.

17:03 One of the two original trains behind me pulls out of the station while another slides in for a few minutes.

17:06 In front of me, "Baby" pulls out.

17:08 The train for Goussainville pulls in.

17:15 My train pulls in.

Now, in the space of just 22 minutes, how many trains have served this station?

Right! A lot. And this is a suburban station, not Union or St Pancras.

My train is ready to board, so I climb aboard and almost fall over because the track is banked (high-speed train passage through the station, you see) and the carriage is tilted over so far that my eyes and feet lose their coordination for a couple of seconds. At 17:17 on the dot we slide out of Melun and just go on picking up speed as quickly as we can. The acceleration of these all-electric trains outstrips the sluggish response of the diesel-electric GO trains back home. By the time we get to the next station up the line (Le Mee) I start to wonder why I am going on a TGV on Friday, after all.

At 17:47 we halt in Gare de Lyon. Exactly thirty minutes door-to-door. At 17:52 I am on line 14, the first in a series of driver-less express subway trains that will serve Paris. At 18:02 I am at Gare St Lazare (ten minutes to cross the heart of Paris by subway train, hah hah!) and by 18:06 I am aboard the non-stop SNCF-RER train non-stop to Poissy. We slide out of Gare St Lazare at 16:16 and I am on the platform at Poissy at 18:33.

So Melun to Poissy in seventy-seven minutes. Google says the fastest trip possible in peak hour is 72 minutes, so my amateur attempt is close to the mark. I have averaged 50 Km/h (crow flight) for the trip.

Good news from this morning's paper. Being French is not about your parentage, it's about who you think you are. I think I am French. (You have suspected it for a long time, I know)

The inside of Cafe Cep during a minute when the tide is out, all except for me and the gentleman sitting next to me. Five minutes ago there were fifteen to twenty people standing along the bar, they drift off in twos and threes leaving the place quiet except for the sound of Madame Sylvie (she is there behind the bar) doing the dishes. Five minutes from now, half a dozen people will have drifted in by ones and twos. Twenty minutes from now the noise level of conversation will be such that I won't be able to hear my lips move as I struggle to read Le Figaro, then ten minutes later the tide will have gone out again.

A bit more about staggered crosswalks. It is nowhere near as awkward as it might seem. Right now I am facing where I want to be, at the hotel ibis, about five minutes walk on a straight line through the Monoprix. Of course, I can't fly like a crow. I can't fly at all, in fact, so I must zig-zag left-right-left-right through the streets.

Using the cross walk in the foreground lets me switch from an easterly direction (the direction I was taking, past the lady with the two children) until I stopped to take the photo) to a southerly direction (towards the St Louis apartments) so this staggered cross walk lets me cut a diagonal off the corner. In Toronto it would be jaywalking, because the police want you to cross right on the intersection line where cars can run over you because the drivers are staring to their left to negotiate the intersection. In France I can zig-zag through town legally and perfectly safely.

Lunch is a meagre serving of what looks like a straightened croissant of cheese and six small but extremely expensive chocolates from a patisserie. I have decide that I am buying and eating far too much bread from these establishments.

Give me a break. I haven't set foot in McDonalds.

I set out again to do shopping. The sky is cloudless. Looks like, and is, perfect weather for me.

Avenue Cep. The apartment blocks mean people live here, and the ground floors are all retail, so there is a wonderful place to live and shop. This area of town is served by a half-dozen different bus routes, and it is always faster to wait for a bus than to walk. It is far more pleasant, of course, to greet and be greeted by every passer-by. 'Bonjour Mesdames", and they carol back in melody "Bonjour Monsieur!". I haven't felt this much at home in many a year.

The top line tells me that the RER train OKRE to Gare de Lyon leaves in 9 minutes. The third line tells me that the SNCF train PALE to Gare St Lazare leaves in 26 minutes. I can wait an extra seventeen minutes for a faster train and then dash across Paris, or, as it turns out, I can sit still, wait less than 2 minutes on the platform at Gare de Lyon, and just keep moving.

The RER offers two fleets. One is a fleet of modern spotless RER trains with "RER" branded large on their sides, usually in two rakes of five carriages each. The SNCF operates trains on behalf of the RER, but these trains are anything from four to ten carriages powered by a single locomotive or a locomotive unit at each end. All RER trains carry four-letter labels ("OKRE" and "PALE" are examples), but some physical trains are RER property while others are SNCF property.

The RER trains are clean, charming, and spotless.

It takes our train 22 seconds to roll past a rake of trucks loaded with new cars from the Citroen plant.

We roll through a dormitory area of the Ile de France

Rakes of gravel trucks at Maisons Laffitte. The gravel will be used in track work this coming weekend.

Rolling past non-rolling stock near Maisons Laffitte

Packs of concrete sleepers/ties line the track as we slide into Maisons Laffitte

In Maisons Laffitte there were TWO trains alongside us. The second is faintly visible through the windows of the first.

That's La Defense, the towers thereof, our next stop.

I risk life and death (of my camera) by taking a shot as we round a curve. That's our train!

Gare Nanterre Université on the left. We neither stop nor correspond here.

NELY is the next train heading westwards.

We are OKRE

This is what you will look like as your friend's head bounces along the tracks. It will be too late to tell him "Don't do that!".

Your head will be next.

The RER platforms within Paris are broad and accommodate several groups of passengers, those waiting for the next train, those waiting for the next-train-but-one and so on.

In Gare de Lyon I hopped off my train and was seduced in by this sign. The first line says "a l'approche". The time (bottom right corner) is 13:08. I would have made a faster trip had I waited for the 13:20 ZACO. Silly impatient me!

A delightfully syntactical sign "If you go this way you will find an escalator that will take you to RER line D on platforms one and three".

On the train to Melun. The "hills" are the left bank of the valley of the Seine. At Grigny-Centre we will burrow directly into and through those hills and emerge on the other side.

Trains in storage somewhere around Villeneuve (which is a large complex of railway activity)

Folks streaming off the platform at Corbeil. (I think it was Corbeil that featured in a Nevil Shute novel "Most Secret")

The windows of the SNCF/RER carriages look like faded Perspex, with a yellowish-tinge.

A row of cookie-cutter buildings march away from this station.

We roll along the Seine. Did you really think there would be a day when we didn't?

And here I sit in splendour. There are five other passengers in this carriage on the way out of town mid-day. It will be a different scene five hours from now as folks head home from the city. meanwhile the Transilien goes on, as steady as breathing in and out.

Saint Fargeau. Who he? (or she?) The commune is in the Yonne department, and the Yonne joins the Seine at Montereau, but we are not at that commune, nor will be today.

These windows are scratched with graffiti.

I am playing with my camera, pretending to be taking a shot out of the window ahead and to my left, but actually spying behind me using the Selfie feature. So now you know. A smart phone doesn't have to be held up facing you; you can still be photographed over-the-shoulder!

You are [not] here [roughly!]

I snoop into charming backyards, most of them filled with vegetable gardens, and with trees loaded with pears. I am jealous.

And the Seine flows along ...

If I had to get off here and sit and wait for the next train back, or even the one after that, I'd be happy.

Let me repeat that ...

The river comes right up to the train track, much as does the Skeena between Terrace and Prince Rupert.

There are narrow beaches. bring the kids here (well, OK, there's only enough room for one) to build sandcastles and get blown into the river by the passing trains.

We approach Melun and I begin harvesting landmarks.

I bet that white apartment building is a good landmark, were I to be rolling around Melun.

And this monolithic block, closer to the heart of the city.

And here we are in Melun I had a coffee in this cafe two years ago .

This time around I am familiar with these station-bus-stations; two years ago I wasn't. Now I know to walk around and spot the out-and-back routes for local trips, or the linear routes to go away and be somewhere else.

I am smart enough to take a photo of the map that shows me where the Information Bureau is. Aspais and Carnot.

And so this will be an easy stroll, maybe 30 minutes, straight up the street to the Information Bureau.

Yes, that's another landmark, a big old church up on a hill.

There is a sameness about buildings in these towns. This corner could be anywhere I've visited on this trip or the last.

And here I am at the first of two bridges that will leap-frog me across the Seine via the island.

The fact that it includes "Restaurant" in its awnings tells me that I can get a steak-frites at lunchtime and a Croque Monsieur at almost any time.

I bet you never thought you'd be seeing another photo of flower baskets lining a bridge

And there is the Collégiale Notre Dame; more about that later.

The navigational poles tell me that this is the wider of the two threads of the river at this island crossing.

And we are on Pont General Leclerc.

Leclerc headed that part of the allied army that liberated Paris, and I have often walked along Avenue Leclerc in the vicinity of Porte d'Orleans.

I pass a ruined-abbey structure.

I am reminded of a Punch cartoon "And this is the ruined abbot(sic) of Lindisfarne"

On this bridge is a row of tables offering used books.

I walked right along these stalls and couldn't see anyone who was taking money. It must have taken ages to set all this up this morning.

Here I am overlooking the quiet arm of the Seine. No barges barge through here.

And there is a lovely tow-path on each bank.

Here is the Rive Droite, as it would be called in Paris.

A couple of barges are tied up on the far side.

As I approach the city centre I am aware of smaller streets beckoning me deeper into the city.

And now I have reached the shopping district that leads me uphill.

I would happily wander these streets all day, but I am on a mission to visit the Information Bureau

I have asked directions and am assured that it is "just a little way ahead" by a couple who look as if they could have known General Leclerc.

Remember that big old church in the distance?

Well, here we are at Église Saint Aspais, hence Rue Saint-Aspais.

I lean back for a broader shot. I really must master this camera.

Small nooks and corners house cheerful plants. To my mind an excellent use of a few square feet of space.

So. Where is the Tourist Office?

It is supposed to be here.

I walk the length of Rue Carnot, up and back, trying to remember what Mr. Puzey told us about Carnot Engines. Heat Engines, they were.

The shops are interesting enough.

But not a trace of a Tourist Bureau. I consult my photograph of the map taken half an hour ago. They can't have moved the entire Bureau in the last half-hour, can they?

I drift up Rue du Miroir ...

... all the way to Boulevard. Victor Hugo, a bus route, and well past where the tourist bureau should be.

Not a sign of it. My finger is pointing to where it isn't, the Tourist Bureau, I mean.

I head back towards Rue Carnot; that's where the tourist map tells me the tourist bureau is, or will be.

I have found the town hall. In theory the Tourist Bureau is about twenty feet to my left.

Then I found a sign giving me my first clue that the bureau is not here at all. Any more.

A lady in the Town Hall tells me to exit, turn left, and the Holy grail is “en face" the fountain. Got it!

I exit the town hall.

I turn left and start walking.

I find the fountain. Piece of cake!

I scan the area surrounding the fountain.

I walk around the fountain, scanning the square.

I walk around the fountain again.

I try saying "I scan the circle" instead of "I scan the square"

I stare into the sun, and decide to walk around the square.

No sign of the tourist bureau anywhere. Why does the city of Melun lie to me? No hotels, no tourist bureau, ...

I walk partway back to the Town hall, then retrace my steps to the fountain. Perhaps the Tourist Bureau just stepped out for a pee or a coffee.

Then I spot this guy in a grey sweater trying to distract me from a Century 21 real estate outlet.

I forgot to mention the flood of police vehicles that had sped past me heading towards the railway station. Here is the helicopter. Has word been leaked to the press that the guy with the awful French and the orange shoulder bag has surfaced in Melun?

The lovely lady in Century 21 rises from her desk and escorts me out of the office (!) onto the street and points to the Tourist Bureau. THREE CHEERS FOR CENTURY 21! If I were going to live or work in a century, I'd choose the 21st, for sure.

There it is! (Yes, you’ll need now to go back to the previous photo to get your bearings)

This, to my mind, is a real sign that tells you where something is.

This, to my mind, is not.

Here it is, facing the fountain. Right!

Inside the place is a bureaucratic cave. The vast hall houses a small desk with two Information Officers.

There are racks of brochures, of course, ...

... and hidden behind one of the racks is a tourist map of the city. Yes! Hidden behind one of the racks is a tourist map of the city.

I'd be ashamed, too, if I had to mount a map in my office showing where my office isn't.

There you go. The river has flooded since time memorial, but now not so much because flood-control dams have been built. See also " Mount Morris Dam ".

In Paris thirty years ago they used water to carry away the garbage of the sidewalks, but this is ridiculous!

So they baked the clay, shocked cracks into the surface, introduced smoke that bled into the cracks ...

... to produce pieces like this.

I am fed up with the Tourist Office. Also I am tired. I take a shot of couple of distinctive buses. The front one is having trouble with its wheelchair ramp. This is not the first time nor will it be the last time that I have witnessed this problem.

I complete my perambulation of the square ...

... and elect to wander back to the station by an alternate route. Away in the distance is a bridge, undoubtedly over the Seine

Here is a zoom shot. Got your bearings now?

The Collégiale beckons.

Another bridge, another war hero.

Another beautiful bank on the river. What I'd give for a jug of bread, and a loaf on the river-bank right now. I must be tired AND hungry.

I love the invitation. Where's my afternoon tea?

Had I stayed in Melun I'd have walked these paths.

It's the Seine, in case you hadn't guessed.

A better view as I approach the Collégiale.

And here is the west end.

That is the bridge I crossed an hour ago, walking from left to right.

And in the distance the new bridge.

This area was (still is?) a penitentiary of some sort.

The walls are in good condition.

I feel sorry for these houses. They used to line a quiet road with horses and carts clip-clopping towards the bridge. Now they are overwhelmed by trucks racing across and almost above.

Now why would you name a laptop computer repair shop like this?

Ta Da! There is an RER train (blue shape, dead centre of the photo)

OK. I am smart enough to remember where the station is, but not smart enough to check the exposure. This isn't a phone, it is a computer, but it has a better camera than I have ever owned in my life.

On the train I decide to study brochures from the displaced Tourist Office.

First off I don't like centered text for descriptive works. For some poems, maybe, but to my mind it makes for difficult reading. I suspect that the eye-brain finds it easier to return to a fixed point to the left, rather than a variable position.

I returned the first map because someone has scribbled in it. Also the second. What are the odds that a third one has been scribbled in? Answer: 100%. A clerk has been paid to indicate to everyone who arrives at the Tourist Office that they are not where they thought that they were going to be. What a boring job.

Yep! Scribbled this change in every brochure.

The reverse side has been carefully corrected, too. I suppose that you have plenty of spare time to do this if no-one can find you after you have moved.

The tourist office is now on “Rue S”.

Why no one thought to paste the name of the street in here I'll never know.

There are three hotels in Melun. (Only three!). The clerks agreed with me that Hôtel ibis is in an industrial area, another hotel is about a 45 minutes walk from the station, and the third is "up here somewhere"

I feel at home with the Transilien system. This bus is indistinguishable from those at Poissy. More important, all the rules and regulations remain the same.

I sit on the platform waiting for my express to Paris Gare de Lyon.

In this part of France, the catenary wires are kept under tension by weights that transmit force through a pulley up above.

A train sliding in to join the first one I saw.

My train "POMU" will be here in 22 minutes.

And seven seconds after I took a photo of it, the sign board went all coy on me.

So I amused myself by taking photos of trains as they pulled in. On this train the doorways look like gaping mouths.

Vroom! A train goes whistling through at speed.

Trains pull in behind me.

Trains pass through behind me.