Day 85: Paris

October 14, 2015

Sometimes when we are in the thick of the action with a cycle tour, I temporarily forget about the blog, and fail to take a photo of something "bloggable". This does not really happen too often, as Dodie can attest. Her favourite example would be after being hit by the truck in Florida, and my first croaked words were "take photo".

So this is nothing as extreme as all that. It's just that we were sitting with Michel eating lunch, waiting for the time to go get the train to Paris. Michel offered us a "Petit Suisse". Michel had already introduced us to this yogurt/cream cheese like confection the other day, and today we just said sure, Petit Suisse now being old hat. But wait a minute, how can something like that become old hat without ever having been through an introduction on the blog?

So Petit Suisse, soft dairy tower with sugar on top - meet the blog:

The Petit Suisee is not exactly yogurt. It is wrapped in paper inside its plastic container, and is rather fun to pop out.

While we are here, Michel also brought out a favourite of his grandkids, Caprice des Dieux (Caprice of the Gods). It is really just like a Brie, but we like their slogan which translates as God, It's Good!

This does not use the possibly contolled word "Brie" on the package, but that is what it tastes like to us.

Waiting for the train, we checked out the Michelin maps of France in the "Tabac". Michelin publishes at difffering scales, with the Departmental (yellow) ones being 1:150,000 and the Regional (orange) ones being 1:200,000. It's all a tradeoff between the information content and the size/weight. We are thinking that the Departmental are the ones for us, for any general attempts to cross France by bike. There are 45 maps in the complete set, but of course one would never need them all. The price in the Tabac was €4.95 each. We bought one just as an example. It is number 316: Loire Atlantic Vendee. Mmmmm, great place to go!

Michel once again finds himself having to take the Grampies to the train station.

This book was for sale at the station. except for having our expert guide Michel, it would be an interesting choice.

The two slightly different resolution series of Michelin maps

The TGV (fast train) was almost like flying. In seeming no time we were back at Angers, and then a brief doze later they announced that we were arriving at Paris - Montparnasse!

Joni and Didier were right there by the train to greet us. In terms of reunions, it had been just one year since Didier and us had gone into the Black Forest looking for cuckoo clocks. But Joni had not seen Didier in 24 years! And we ourselves had not seen our daughter Joni in 2 years! So there was a goodly amount of hugging.

Now came a part which I had much enjoyed before, on arriving in Paris - going out in the street and absorbing the very Paris-ness of it: Elegant apartment buildings, bakeries and all manner of other shops, and soon - traffic.

The first bakery we came upon in Paris (Joni is jumping up and down in the background).

Didier is a master at Paris driving. As I had observed before, it is a carefully orchestrated dance. You see your chance and you take it. If someone else has the same idea (like driving in a certain lane, right now) then there is an instant and precise calculation about who has the positional edge and who has the most guts. If you lose the lane (or turn priority, or whatever) then you don't get mad, you just carry on to fight again at he next point of contention. Dider seemed able to do this while talking to us live and to his daughter on the cell phone, while watching the GPS mounted in the car's console.

Les Invalides - burial place of Napoleon

Oh,oh, is this the Diana tunnel, Didier?

Joni, of course, is my daughter, and she has just arrived in Europe from the relative food desert of Central America. On the other hand, for us this is a day off bike - which means we need to limit food intake. That has the makings of a conflict.

Didier entered the fray by immediately taking us to the patisserie where the Paris-Brest pastry was invented. According to Wikipedia: "The pastry was created in 1910 to commemorate the Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle race begun in 1891. Its circular shape is representative of a wheel. It became popular with riders on the Paris–Brest cycle race, partly because of its energizing high caloric value, and is now found in pâtisseries all over France. Alan Richman of GQ magazine named the Paris–Brest pastry at the Balsan restaurant of the Elysian Hotel (now Waldorf Astoria Chicago), Chicago the best dessert in the U.S. for 2010"

We really have become country bumpkins, cycling through the villages of rural France. Anyway, you would guess that because we think the price of an eclair, anyway, should be 1.50 to 2.00. So when I walked in to patissier Durand and saw that an eclair was 3.80 and a Paris-Brest was 4.40, I freaked. I was asking Didier if this was per dozen, or what. But he just ignored me and bought a huge pile of them. The sales lady too was just casually chatting, with no hint that she had just completed the high value transaction of the month.

Paris-Brest pastry, which is puff pastry filled with nut cream. Check that price - and it's not per dozen, either.

Other costly pastries. If we want cheap prices we will have to go back to our villages.

A similar situation evolved at the hotel. The lady let me know that I had to pay right away - which differs from almost all the hotels we have stayed in. In those, you pay the next day, and in France they do not seem to even care who you are. They just hand you a key, and tomorrow is another day. So I told the lady that I did not know the ropes because I was from the country - like Nantes. That got a good laugh.

We put Joni down for a nap, since she is still in the time frame when you have to deal with jet lag. We have yet to really decide what to look at or do in Paris. But as we (and maybe not the hotel) say - tomorrow is another day.

The Seine, as seen from Didier's back yard.

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