September 17, 2024
To Paris
As planned, Rachael is out the door and down the street to the nearest pharmacy at 8:45 and standing at their door when they open. Before that she’s had coffee and breakfast and is mostly packed in preparation for departure. If the apartment were available another day we might opt to stay on, but it isn’t and so it’s a moving day. Checkout is at 11:00 sharp we’ve been instructed so I start packing myself while she’s out because we’ll be running short on time by the time she returns with my meds. The good news is that neither of us seems the worse for wear for last night’s experience.
We’ve cut it too close, and it’s 10:58 when I wheel Rachael’s bike into the hall. I return to the room to get mine, and when I open the door again here’s the cleaning lady wondering if she can come in now. A close shave.
On the street, I realize I can’t find my glasses. I go back to the room, the cleaning lady frowns, but I at least take another look around at the obvious surfaces where they might have been left behind. No luck. Possibly I’ve got them packed away - in the pocket of my Pendleton maybe - but if I’ve left them I trust I’ll hear from the host soon. For now there’s nothing else to do but proceed to our next destination.
So where are we going? Since we have to move on anyway we may as well proceed with the plan we made for the next several days soon after we arrived here. Today we’re taking the train to Paris, where we’ve booked a hotel for the night; and tomorrow we’ll hop back on the train and move on to Tours where we have an apartment booked for three nights. That was our plan for the best way to move on from here - two easy train rides, and three uncommitted days in Tours to continue recovery and plan for what comes next.
It’s a really easy ride to the train station - flat, direct, only a half mile, and it’s a dry warm day. It takes us no time, and we’re amused now to wonder how we could have gotten so messed up when we arrived that it took us four miles to go the other direction. That was the fiasco that convinced us that we always need to create and load a route no matter how easy the route seems. We’ve done that this time, and are starting out with four routes loaded for the next two days: to this train station, to the Paris hotel, to the Paris Austerlitz station, and to the Tours apartment.
We’ve got plenty of time on our hands since our train won’t depart for over two hours. There are only a few seats inside the station but we only need the two that are unoccupied. We take them and then wait until noon and the agent comes around to inform us that the station is closing for the lunch hour so we relocate to the McDonalds next door where we can stay inside and keep warm. We just walk straight over, forgetting that we’re leaving our unlocked, loaded bikes leaning against the back wall of the station. Its only through dumb luck that they’re still there when we eventually return.
While Rachael punches in our order I return to our table and decide to pull out the camera and take a shot of this memorable occasion - I can’t remember the last time I was inside of a McDonalds so this will help me keep track. It’s likely been at least several years.
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I take the shot with the phone instead though because now I find that I’m missing my camera also. Glasses and camera, that would be a TA record I wouldn’t want to achieve. I tell Rachael as soon as she returns, and she said we just received a message from Booking, so I open it up:
Yipes! It’s a good thing that I decided to take a photo or I’d have missed my chance. It’s embarrassing that I didn’t see this before because it came nearly an hour ago. I should have been monitoring messages because of my missing glasses, but that’s just the sort of thing that goes wrong when you have pneumonia. Don’t let that happen to you!
So I hand Rachael my iPad, show her the translation, and step up to go get my bike. That prompts her to realize we’ve left them behind so she comes with me and brings hers back to the McDonalds where she can keep an eye on it.
Retrieving the goods is a snap. It’s only a flat half mile, I ave got an unloaded bike, and I don’t get lost this time. When I arrive at the apartment I see that the window is open airing the unit on so I rap on it and when she looks up she gathers up the camera and glasses - from different rooms, which surprises me. I really wonder where they got left. I doubt that this would have happened if we hadn’t been rushed out. We’re usually very careful to take a thorough last look.
She hands them through the window, and I bike back to the station - I’ve really gotten this route down! And it’s nice to find that my Big Mac is still warm when I return. When I’ve downed it I send Susan an email, asking her if she can translate it because that’s the kind of guy I am, one with a priceless sense of humor. She calls back almost immediately and with a concerned tone in her voice reads the translation to me:
You forgot a camera and a pair of glasses.
The cleaning lady will be there until 12:30.
So that was mean of me. I feel bad. Sorry, Susan. You didn’t deserve that.
I was really surprised when I realized how easy it is to get to Paris from here. We just backtrack to Rouen (the last two stages or the ride getting here), but then we just stay on the second train until the end of the line. It’s easier to get to Paris than almost anywhere, which is why we settled on this plan.
Today it goes without a hitch. We’re on the first train for one stop, get off, have ten minutes for an easy transfer to the Paris train, and then just sit and relax for the next two hours. By the time the long train is fully packed so we wait until everyone else departs before getting our bikes off (we’ve hung them on hangers, with the planniers removed) and unload everything with no pressure. Very easy.
When we’re done reloading the bikes and start heading down the very long platform Rachael chuckles, I look up, and here’s Ms. carpenter aiming her camera at us. Welcome to Paris!
She escorts us to the exit, and then stops to tell us that she needs help getting out. This is one of those stations where you need your ticket both to get in and get out, and she doesn’t have a ticket to let herself through the gate - it begs the question of how she got through the first time. Fortunately Rachael’s got the camera on to help us remember how it went.
It’s an amazing day when we step out of the station: blue sky, calm, warm - it must be fifteen degrees warmer here than back in Fécamp. We continue our visit for maybe another twenty minutes - standing at first, and then sitting at a vacant table until an guy comes out and apologetically tells us we need to buy something if we want to keep sitting here.
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This is enough for now though. We’ll get a real visit tomorrow when she comes over to our hotel to join us for lunch, but it’s getting to be time for me to check in and check out.
We biked in Paris two years ago when we stopped in to visit Susan on our way north to Calais. It was exciting to see how transformed the city was from when we last saw it in 1996, with new bike lanes everywhere jammed with cyclists and scooterists streaming down the historic streets of Paris, many of them on bikes from the new bike share program. It was a little unnerving too though, with some of the lanes too narrow for heavy, fast two directional traffic, some of the riders hauling food carts or on wide work bikes that claimed more than their share of the space.
It’s only been two years, but it’s startling how much has changed. The city just keeps grabbing back more space from the cars, and in a big plus the electric scooters have been banned. It feels safer and more relaxed, and a real urban miracle.
Our hotel, l’Universite, is two miles away and across the river. It’s an easy ride on marked bikeways until we finally leave the network two blocks from our hotel. We’re not really looking around much, concentrating on the traffic flow and keeping our lane, but it’s quietly thrilling just being aware of where we are - oh, here’s the Louvre!
It’s a nice hotel. We’re well received, and they show us to the hallway where we can leave our bikes as they’d agreed to in advance when we booked here. We take the elevator up to our fourth floor room and then I retire from the scene for the next several hours. Later though we head down the street to the galette shop on the corner for a light meal, even better than that Big Mac. I’m obviously not well yet, but already I feel like I’m doing better.
When we return to our hotel though we’re greeted with some bad news: the elevator is out of service. There’s nothing to be done but scale the spiral staircase to the top, but at least it’s just now. Earlier we’d have been lugging the panniers with us.
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1 month ago
1 month ago
Today's ride: 4 miles (6 km)
Total: 3,796 miles (6,109 km)
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1 month ago
We’re in Unicastillo - La Pasado de Unicastillo and as thrilled as you were at the time.
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