Day 2: Paris to Amsterdam

March 28, 2018

We stepped out of our hotel this morning this time fully expecting to step in to North Africa. In fact, I was eager to show Dodie the date store I had found, the BBQ, the shawarma, the flat breads, etc. But we were not prepared for the pleasant surprise of a many blocks long market, running directly across the street from us.

In the cold Paris drizzle it was impressive to see the dozens and dozens of vendors, all set up with beautiful displays of fruits and vegetables, plus stalls of meat products, some cheese, and some bread. The vendors had the advantage in the rain of being under an elevated metro line, under construction. That shielded them from all but drifting spray or occasional leaks from above.

What made the market even more spectacular was that it was completely jammed with shoppers, and that most of these were of some sort of exotic (to us) origin. Most vendors too seemed to have originated in some far off place. True to this impression, many were calling out to advertise their wares, and while some of this was in French, generally it was not.

We stopped to buy some clementine oranges, and I could have learned the word for this since the vendor was chanting it over and over. Needless to say, the oranges were great.

Here is a shot for daughter Laurie, who loves olives.

We were actually looking for something like a market to find breakfast, but since the "street food is always better on the other side" we decided to continue and go to the one we had first spotted on Google Maps. This was called the covered market of San Quentin, on Magenta Ave.

To get to the market we had to pass the Gare du Nord but not quite reach the Gare de l'Est. Paris has many train stations, but these two are distinguished by being very close to each other. We walked in the rain, getting increasingly damp and chilled, but we were on a mission. We did find the place, and it was strange. All the produce was there and the variety was greater than at the first market, but this one lacked all vitality. In fact it seemed to lack customers of any sort. It was clear that the immigrant community under the bridge had outdone this upmarket covered venue by a long shot. Even so we got a coffee, pain aux raisins, and chausson pommes at a market bakery, and found the quality top notch.

Hey, no customers at the covered market!

We trudged back through the rain to a somewhat distant metro station in order to head over to our rendez vous point with our friends Didier and Corinne. Metro stations are quite close together, but they are working on the lines and we could not get access to the train we needed at the station closest to us.

No matter, because even a "distant" station is quite close and soon we were on our way to the eastern edge of town. Didier and Corinne were on time and had no trouble spotting the only two people in Paris dressed in bright yellow who were not municipal workers.

We took ourselves to a nearby Italian restaurant where we got a table by the window in order to benefit from whatever meager light and warmth the day was offering. We were also opposite the open kitchen, which seemed to feature a lot of open fires and several ovens. All this was good as it contributed to unchilling us.

While the other three chose pasta dishes, I decided to gamble on pizza. This turned out to be a great choice. Somehow, without a wood oven, they came up with a light and flavourful crust, slightly charred on the sides and bottom. This was easily the best I have seen in several years.

The pleasure of sitting with our old friends was just so delightful. We have known Didier for almost 30 years through our daughter, but no matter. And for their part, we see they regard the Grampies not as doddery parent figures but as exotic world travellers.

We brought a gift in the form of Canada branded oven mitts. It was a bit of a strange choice, but was immediately adopted by Corinne as something to use with her kiln. Corinne is an extremely skilled sculptress, and part of our chat brought us up to date on the evolution of her art. Corinne focuses on smiling oriental monk figures, and we learned that now these have evolved to be holding various animals. Here is what some of the figures look like:

Didier and Corinne and the oven (kiln) mitts.

I was glad that Corinne and Didier suggested coffee and dessert, because I always appreciate a shot at more treats. I chose "café gourmand" which is coffee and a selection of small goodies, varying in the detail from restaurant to restaurant. In this case the detail was a selection of mousse type things in small cups. Good.

We said a nice goodbye to Didier and Corinne with hopes that we will see them again soon. It will happen, because we will plan to return to this wonderful city.

We made our way back toward our hotel, past some of those luggage shops I had noticed earlier. It had been percolating in my mind, since we are dragging our panniers in hard to carry bags and bundles. How much easier it would be to have a rolling suitcase. The reason we don't is of course that we can not take such a thing onto the bikes. In one of the shops we found a rolling case which at 18 euros is cheap enough to discard when no longer needed. We will just look for someone who can use it. So we packed most of our stuff into this thing and happily trundled our way back over to Gare du Nord.

The type of streets we were generally trudging through (notice the bike lane!)

This part of Paris has many clothing stores, like this

We were early, so we took a seat in a cafe in the station. We shared a table with a young man who turned out to be Leonardo. Despite his Italian sounding name he is German, from Munich but now living in Koln. We found that he is a reviewer of tech products and is in town for a conference with Huawei. We showed him our blogs, and had a good time chatting in general. Then we three were joined at our table by another patron. We didn't get his name, but we learned that he was originally from Senegal. He has lived in Paris 30 years and has four children grown here.

I fired up Senegal on Google Maps and got a street view of Dakar, his home town. He looked at it and smiled. "Beautiful, isn't it!", he beamed. Frankly, it was rather crumbly, but home is always special.

Kind of crumbly, but home is always nice.

The man from Dakar had to leave, but he was replaced at the table by a young Russian, from St. Petersburg. (Seating is at a premium in the station). He was on his way to Rotterdam to visit his sister. Notably he was walking with crutches, and, ever rude and inquisitive I found out that he had jumped into a swimming pool that turned out to have just two feet of water in it, injuring his leg. That's quite a story.

Being able to sit at a table in Paris and get a flavour of Munich and Dakar, St. Petersburg, and Rotterdam is part of the fabric of this town, and an exotic experience for us. By the same token, for someone from St. Petersburg to meet people from the Pacific coast of Canada is hopefully a good experience for them as well, even if they do have to explain about the dumb pool accident!

The Thalys train to Amsterdam is a TGV - high speed one, and as such looks to me like a rather sly snake. However, ours is red, making it sly but with style. Much like it was when entering Europe itself, checkin and bureaucracy entering the train was at a minimum. We may have waved our online ticket at an agent standing by the door, but whether we might be booked for Brussels or Rotterdam or whatever did not seem to concern anyone. Neither did they care how many pieces of luggage we had or where we put them. Everyone just took their seat and the thing blasted off across northern France, slick as can be and with good wifi to boot.

Famous cities slid by with disconcerting speed - Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and it seemed in no time we were in Amsterdam. Stepping out of the train we immediately noticed how chill the air was. Oh,oh, this is about where we are going to start cycling from! We left our extra warm clothes at home, lulled by the gentle Victoria Spring. Well, if really forced we can look for more clothes here.

Now that we have been in Amsterdam a couple of times already, the surroundings are fairly familiar. However the people are far faster moving here than in Paris and you need to be double alert for speedy people, trams, cars, and bikes.

We made our way to Warmoesstraat, where our 90 euro hole in the wall hotel is, and also coincidentally an Indonesian restaurant we had been looking for last time. As is common in Amsterdam, the room is up several flights of near vertical, ladder like stairs. In this case as an extra treat the common toilet is at the bottom of those stairs!

Tomorrow is a day to look forward to for us as we hope to pick up our bikes. Also we are booked at the super luxury Bastion hotel in Apeldoorn, and can look forward to a toilet somewhere in the nearer vicinity!

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