Day 83: Maisons Laffitte to Paris (and back)

April 29, 2024

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This was a day filled with iconic pleasures. It began with waking up just beside the Seine, that most romantic of rivers. I went down to greet it, since it is right by Didier's house.

My real mission, reason for being out early, was to walk over to the bakery for fresh croissants. This is one of my all time favourite activities, though bicycling over makes up the real dream. In this case, the bakery is too close to cycle to!

Although I came for croissants, this did not disqualify the apple tartelettes!

Today was the day not just for the Seine and the bakery, but to go into the heart of Paris to meet up with cycle touring legend Susan Carpenter, who now lives here part time, and to have a bit of a guided walk and picnic with her, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

To go into Paris from Maisons-Laffitte we would take the suburban train, the RER. We walked up to the station, through the commercial part of Maisons-Laffitte. This is a complete town, with everything one might want in terms of stores and restaurants, plus its own chateau. It's not only that our friend Didier lives here, but the place is really good for visiting Paris - with everything at hand, including two hotels, and no crowds. The RER makes it easy to access any part of Paris at all.

City Hall, is on the way to the RER station.

The RER cuts across a few loops of the Seine, and finally affords a view like this of the river and the Eiffel Tower.

The plan to reach Susan involved jumping off the RER at Etoile, and hopping the Metro line 6 for a few stops. Etoile is a station at the Champs Elysee, and is so named for the very many streets that emanate from the roundabout that circles the Arc de Triomphe. One never sees any of this, though, since the Metro and RER are all underground.

We had no trouble finding the Metro line 6, and only casually glanced at the sign below. Like the French Routes Barrees, lots of things on the Metro and RER may be claimed to be blocked, but the operating assumption is that it is not now or not where we are going on the system.

My blase attitude weakened a lot when I saw the station where we were supposed to get off and to meet Susan blacked out. Ours was to be the one just before Sevres-Lecourbe. Fortunately I was able to raise Susan on the phone and shift our rendez-vous to Sevres-Lecourbe. But of course the train then stopped at all the blacked out stations. Go figure!

And then suddenly WOW, there was both Susan, and Paris!

Our first thing, as must be the case for so many Paris visitors, was to pass by the Eiffel Tower.

Paris is hosting the Olympics in July-August, and the Eiffel Tower area - the Champs de Mars will be site of the opening ceremonies. Grandstands have been erected, and there is a structure called the Grand Palais Ephemere nearby. This temporary structure at the Champs de Mars is standing in for the original Grand Palais exhibition hall, that is undergoing renovation. The temporary structure here will host wrestling and judo Olympic events.

Susan has the same camera as me, Suzanne, Scott, and no doubt other Cycleblazers. It has 30x zoom but still fits in a pocket.

Rick Steves, the author of so many Europe guidebooks made the Rue Cler famous as a place with many bakeries, restaurants, and fruit stores. It's not like a street market, just some blocks with a concentration of good stores. But that was enough to make it our second destination.

On the way to Rue Cler, those typical Paris buildings. You can go into the Metro, travel a few stations, and emerge to find more and more of this type of Paris scene.

Another Paris standard, here on Rue Cler, is the outdoor cafe, usually with red awnings.

And we can also tell we are in Paris by the super typical souvenirs:

Here is the heart of Rue Cler. By the way, when we talked up Rue Cler with Didier, who has lived here all his adult life, he had no idea what we were talking about

Here Susan and Dodie check out a BBQ place, Rue Cler.

Look at the local French strawberries, mushrooms, asparagus!

This fruit store also has a fresh orange juice machine. We'll be back!

Ok, we're back. Let's get some juice!

And what were those strawberries?

We did go back to the BBQ place as well, and got this:

We retraced steps a little bit, passing by those great buildings that are all around , more red awning cafes, and back to the Champs de Mars.

The Eiffel stands by the river, and near it is a river boat dock. The boats go up and down the Seine, and give great views of the famous buildings and monuments that line or can be seen from the waterway.

The metallic flame themed thing in the middle of the frame is a countdown clock to the Olympics.

This is the scene at the Seine near the Eiffel Tower.

Not sure about this duck - could be some kind of cross?

We undertook a little walk along the Seine, which naturally took us by several famous bridges. The one just by the Eiffel Tower is the Pont d'Iena.

The Cycleblazers spotted some other cyclists, resulting in a "meetup". These were on the first day of a ten day outing.

A Russian Orthodox church, visible from the Seine.

Now at the famous Pont d'Alma we see the fateful Princess Diana tunnel. In my photo are motorcyclists, but not paparazzi.

Tour boats coming under the bridge have lots of customers.

Flame of Liberty above the tunnel represents the Statue of Liberty flame.

Typical housing opposite the Alma bridge.

And finally the glorious Alexander III bridge, completed in 1900 along with the nearby Grand Palais. The style is Art Nouveau, and the bridge is considered the most elaborate on the Seine.

This old Fiat was parked by the bridge. It's amazing how small it is.

Lots of couples come for photos on the bridge. I realized that one reason is that the Eiffel Tower can be in the background if you line it up right.

Another couple. The guy is trying to be "cool", I guess.

Across the bridge is "Les Invalides" which was established by Napoleon for injured or retired soldiers. Today it houses a military museum.

Napoleon is buried under the dome, just barely visible on the left.

Here is another great apartment building.

Detail of carving on the apartment building:

Vauban was a very famous military architect, responsible for a lot of forts around France. The star like design on the statue base is the type of fort design he used.

It was finally time to end the day and say farewell to Susan for another time. She led us to a likely Metro station, and had it figured how we coud get from there to CDG-Etoile, from which we could catch the RER-A back to Maisons Laffitte.

Thanks Susan, see you next time!

Susan did have it correctly figured, but she could not anticipate the vagaries of the Metro system. We got on the platform and into the train, only to have everyone suddenly bail out back to the platform after some unintelligible announcement. Along with the rest we waited for the next train, but the performance was repeated, and then again! We all then learned that some emergency on the line would mean to way to get through for an hour or two. That left everyone scrambling to reconfigure their routing.

Our reconfigure took us on another line, to Opera, where we should be able to get on the RER. But at Opera, when we put our tickets, purchased in the morning, into the reader, they were rejected. A volunteer helper nearby suggested that the tickets could have been magnetically zapped by our cell phone, and she directed us to a wicket where we could get replacements.

The man in the wicket put our tickets in a reader and declared that they were only good until 17:00, and it was 17:34, so go away. Dodie tried to explain that not only had we not been told of any time limit when buying the tickets, but that we were late only because of the failure of the train to Etoile. But the man was having none of it, and he began to shout "Your tickets are expired, go away!" Dodie raised her voice (slightly, as per her demure nature!) and said "Please listen, it's because of your own train emergency". But the man at first got louder, and then turned off his mike and speaker and ignored us.

The rude man and the next customer. If this idiot is still working here when the hoards of confused foreign visitors arrive for the Olympics, watch out!

It still wasn't easy, because the station was crowded at rush hour, and there was a tricky and poorly marked thing about going down on an elevator to get to the RER platform.

Once on the platform there was still the fact that of trains coming by every few minutes, not all were going where we needed to be. You had to watch the screen carefully to make sure before boarding. But once you understood what was going on, it was quite easy to manage. Next time, we'll be pros!

Today's ride: 12 km (7 miles)
Total: 4,024 km (2,499 miles)

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Suzanne GibsonWhat a wonderful day!
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1 month ago

Susan CarpenterA most enjoyable day - it looks like I couldn't keep a smile off my face!
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1 month ago