July 29, 2016
Paris Arrival
One never really sleeps when crossing the great pond. The food was not up to snuff due to the strike, so we ended up having cold everything. That is one of the things I look forward to on an Air France flight. C'est la vie!
So I mostly catnapped through the "night" in somewhat better accommodations than you get in economy. I had plenty of space but probably would have preferred a seat that reclined versus slide down. But when the cabin lights came on, I allowed myself coffee to get me going. And two hours later, we landed at Charles de Gaulle to a somewhat overcast day.
We had not made up our lost time, so we landed after 11:30 AM. De-boarding seemed delayed as well, but once started, we were soon at passport control and long lines. My guess is it took an hour to get to baggage claim, but our bikes were there, and the boxes were in good condition! That's always good news!
So after commandeering a cart, we wheeled them out into the mess that is Charles de Gaulle Airport. This is not Frankfurt, which by comparison is a breeze. But we found an out-of-the-way spot and assembled our bikes without interruption. Literally, no one said a word! Except one airline employee who asked us to make sure our empty boxes could be easily inspected after we discarded them. That was easy.
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Next . . . Where were we? And how do we exit? Actually, I knew where we were, just not relative to our ride start in Garmin. Initially I thought we had been brought in at a different terminal than originally told. Later I learned I had just started our course at the wrong terminal (2D versus 2E, and there are several 2E terminals depending on your gate!). So I had to figure out basically if we should go left or right. I had sort of decided left, and that turned out to be correct. I was shooting in the dark to an extent since I had no SIM card and could not download my route via my RWGPS app. But in this case the Garmin actually helped as we were only two terminal buildings away from the ride start. We had to cross the bus depot and then head west!
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But if you have ever been through CDG, then you know the roads are very confusing. We finally decided to take the far ramp you can see in the picture above and then made an "illegal" jog to get on the road we wanted (which is where we got our first and only horn blow). That road was basically a loop road that visited every terminal arrival and departure road and took us out of the airport. Mind you, skip the main access road! While we visited every terminal on the way out . . . traffic there moves slower, and congestion is actually your friend!
From there, our route took us through the cargo and airport support areas and out of CDG. We had a few more missed turns, but they were quickly resolved. Soon we were riding on designated bike trails near and in residential neighborhoods comprising the suburbs of Paris!
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After about 10 miles, we arrived at our real goal: Parc Forestier National de Sevran and the Canal de l'Ourcq . . . which leads to the Bassin de la Villette and then to the Canal Saint-Martin. This has a paved bike trail that will take you all the way into central Paris through forests, tree-lined trails, along active waterways with locks, boats and recreational areas, and finally into the city center. It was purely delightful. It is a very popular route with the locals and touring cyclists, of which we saw a few that we rode with on and off all the way into town.
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As a bridge engineer, I was fortunate to arrive at the opening of this unique lift span that was letting a tour boat through. Very interesting mechanism assisted by hydraulic lifts (the latter, a retrofit, no doubt!).
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From there it was an easy ride to Place de la République and our hotel. And the road I was worried about, Boulevard de Magenta, had its own bike trail! Bravo for the French!
Today's ride: 22 miles (35 km)
Total: 22 miles (35 km)
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