This was another of those “what it’s all about” bike tour days.
I had been to London before, by emerging from the train and then eventually boarding an international flight, but I’d never been out in the English countryside. Now we had an entire day ahead of just riding, and it was almost exactly the summer solstice, and our destination was Canterbury. The stage was set for an amazing journey.
Packing for our first day up and away from the coast.
It’s a bit disorienting being in the country that spawned Alice In Wonderland, and seeing the version of the Cheshire Cat popularized by that weird American movie from 2010. American cinema has quite the global reach.
This will slightly reduce the bruising you get when you collide with this stanchion at speed.
Once breakfast and coffee were in us, we began zig-zagging upwards to the start of national cycle trail number 17, which led due north towards Canterbury and promised relatively quiet but paved roads all the way.
And it delivered! Though I must admit the first mile, starting around The Church Of St. Nicholas, was pretty steep going. It had to route around an enormous train station that connected to the Eurotunnel line.
A little ways down the road we found a nifty museum and souvenir shop, and stopped to poke around. Plenty of daylight, and only about 25 miles to cover, with no big hills. Why not linger?
We were consistently off the main roads, and cars were so rare that it was easy to imagine I was riding through the countryside in an era where cars weren’t even a thing yet, and the most likely vehicle I would encounter was a hay wagon, and no one went any faster than about 15 miles an hour unless they were on a train or a good horse. Of course that was silly because the roads were quite modern, but in my mind it was an alternate history where this wasn’t a paradox.
I set aside the fine condition of the road, and just absorbed the scenery, along with the sounds of animals and the smell of the fields and trees. One hill merged gently into another, and as I turned the pedals the sight-lines churned with a languid procession of hedgerows, glowing pastures, ivy-draped wooden fences, weathered stone walls, and irregular patches of cropland. Occasionally everything narrowed down to a tunnel of deep green foliage, streaked with sun, then opened out again, as though I was entering a new chapter in a story.
An hour or so into this, I got a specific feeling that I sometimes get on these journeys, on days like this one. For long moments I felt like I was alive and experiencing my environment just like usual, except I had been ripped entirely out of regular time and space. It’s similar to that feeling you get when you’re dreaming and you realize you’re in a dream: You start looking around in disbelief because things feel deceptively real. At the same time, there’s a complete break – a discontinuity – with your regular life. In fact, it’s so complete that you’re not even sure your regular life is actually a thing. It’s on the other side of the looking glass and no matter how deeply you stare into it, you just see more of where you are. It’s not exactly frightening, because you don’t mind being here. But it is exceedingly confusing.
I had seen the English countryside in films, pictures, paintings — even imagined it as I read history and fantasy in countless books. Now I was inside them all. This is where Chaucer’s pilgrims walked. This is more or less what real people saw and smelled here a thousand years ago. What life — whose life — am I living just now? Or, how many?
I paused a few times and just stared at the trees, or leaned on the bike and closed my eyes and listened. What a gorgeous summer day. One of millions here, and the first one of mine.
The sheep taunted me as I pedaled, so I taunted them back!
To my secret amusement I realized I was riding on “Pett Bottom Road” past “Gorsley Wood”, and had just passed a tavern called “The Duck.” Cute names make any geography better.
Nick was still riding ahead of me and already in the downtown, but I stopped at the edge of Canterbury to check out St Martin’s Church, the oldest existing parish church in the English-speaking world.
St Martin’s Church is not only the oldest church in England, it’s the oldest complete standing building in England. It incorporates a structure from Roman times into its walls, and has been kept in reasonable repair for over 1500 years while adapted for various uses.
I checked us in at the hotel – a dank and slightly sinister place called Greyfriars that I found quite charming – and we rode out in pursuit of dinner.
If falling masonry was reason to close this place, it should have been closed several hundred years ago…
It’s so magnificent that as soon as you see it a tour of the interior becomes a mandatory event in your future. It’s undeniable. We decided to wait a few days until Andrew was with us.
The city streets empty out at night, and the place becomes proper spooky. We had a good time drifting around them on two wheels.
It was pretty late when we returned to the hotel, which was perfect because I wanted to carry the bikes inside and I didn’t want the manager to hassle me about it. Recumbents can be awkward to move, but with these you can actually tilt them straight up and grab them around the seat, which lets you hold them very close to your body. Perfect for negotiating dank and sinister staircases covered in precious woodwork that you don’t want to gouge with a sprocket.
An amazing cross-country day, and now there was a legendary city to explore! Hooray for bike tours!
We’ve been playing it fast and loose with the schedule, so we’d been fast and loose with the hotel bookings. I’d booked us a place south of Dover as soon as we got off the boat. Often there’s little downside to this when you’re in a touristy region with a lot of churn because rooms spontaneously open up. This time the power of databases failed us.
When I walked into our hotel lobby, a customer was having a heated argument with the guy behind the counter. She said she already paid for a room, but the guy insisted the room didn’t exist: According to him the booking service had been double-booking his rooms.
“People have been arriving all day to take rooms that somebody else is in!” he groused. “I’ve called them and mailed them to make it stop, and they tell me nothing!”
She was unimpressed by this explanation, and said so. Meanwhile, her husband was out on the front steps, looking for another room with his phone. Instead of using some specialized app he was calling hotels, one by one, and asking if they had a vacancy. He was done trusting databases for the night.
Just then, another guy came downstairs in a big hurry, slammed the keys to room number three on the desk and said “I have an urgent call. I need to leave immediately!”
The customer looked at the keys and said “How about if we take that room?”
The manager reluctantly agreed and said “I’ll go up and see if it’s clean.”
While he was upstairs, the customer wandered outside to check in with her husband, who had just finished booking a room at another hotel about a mile away. The three of us complained together about how insane it was that the hotel couldn’t prevent its own double-bookings. I pointed at the bicycles and said, “We came here on bikes! Now we’re going to have to ride all the way up the hill to the campground to find a place to stay.”
The manager came downstairs and declared “The room looks fine.”
Instead of taking it, the customer turned to me and said, “Hey, we have a room booked already and we can get a refund from here. Why don’t you take that room instead?”
And thus was the bacon of Nick and myself saved.
The manager called a taxi for the customer and her husband, and Nick and I moved a bunch of bags up into the room. I had already paid for an adjacent room that was currently occupied, and the cost was the same so there was no additional charge. As I signed the standard paperwork I chatted with the manager, and learned that he had purchased the hotel 51 years ago and rebuilt it from the ground up. He’s from the Canary Islands and has been taking groups of school kids from there on group outings to major cities across Europe for 37 years, with transportation and interpreters, as a way to enrich the community he’s from. He showed me a brochure with pride, and the prices looked very reasonable.
When he heard we were from California he said, “I’ve taken a bunch of vacations to there! It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world!” That’s quite an endorsement from someone who grew up on the Canary Islands.
“Hey, you know what? For the trouble, the next time you come through here you can stay for free.”
“That’s really nice of you! Although, it might not be for a long time. We don’t get to ride much and there’s a lot of amazing country to see here.”
He shrugged and said “I already done 50 years here. I can wait a bit.”
Settling in at the church waiting for the concert.
It’s a 400-year-old church on one of the little islands in the river Seine. I had a bit of time to stroll around and snap photos before we all sat down.
I can’t help thinking of fault lines back in California when I see this dude.
A few weeks later I would show these pictures to Ann and Andrew. Of the first one, I said “I can’t help thinking of the Bay Area when I see San Andreas…”
Andrew replied, “Hah, well that’s hardly his fault. Oh wait! it is.”
When I showed them second picture, of the plaque donated by the city of St Louis, Andrew said “Wow, thanks guys. Classy American gift…”
I said, “Oh come on, there’s not a lot going on in St Louis, and a plaque is a nice gift.”
Ann said, “Tell that to my dentist…”
Aaaanyway. The conductor walked to the podium and there was a brief introduction, then a couple of short pieces I wasn’t familiar with but enjoyed. Then the full choir shuffled out and the requiem began.
Nice shed you’ve got here! Must keep the rain out a treat!
It was wonderful. An absolutely “bucket list” experience, and one that I didn’t even know I could have before yesterday. This music, in this intimate old church, in the heart of Paris… Oh là là!
I noticed that among all the people in the audience, I moved around the most. I couldn’t help tilting my head and tapping my fingers on my leg. I didn’t want to bother other people, but … come on y’all, it’s great music. I suppose if I spent more time in churches I would feel more hushed and reverential, and less like I was at a show that could be visibly appreciated.
Some well-dressed people in the audience stuck their phones up and tried to record large chunks of the performance. Like, not 30 seconds or so, but entire five-minute movements. It was a little strange because I thought only Americans were that gauche.
The performance relaxed me, beyond the relaxation I already felt from the weekend. When I emerged from the church I was like, “aaaaahhhhh,” and walked slowly around the little island with my AirPods quieting the city sounds. And then, ice cream was right there, so why not!
This is about an hour of waiting in line for a few scoops of ice cream. I’m sure it’s tasty but, I’m going to go with a different vendor, thanks…
One scoop passionfruit and one scoop dark chocolate.
I also knew it was a holiday from work tomorrow. Usually I would spend part of Sunday reviewing notes and email, to be ready the next morning. The thought that I didn’t have anything to do at all except stare at the canal and eat ice cream, with the Requiem echoing in my head, felt unfamiliar in a way that was almost sad.
It really is true that people live their lives stretched out, across the events of the previous days and the looming demands of the next ones. The feeling that I didn’t have to leave the present moment at all – not just for the next hour, but for the rest of the day – was spooky. I wasn’t even planning to change locations soon, like I usually would on a bike tour.
Why walk around in the crowded streets when you can cram your butt onto a barge, standing cheek-to-cheek?
Why walk around in the crowded streets when you can cram your butt onto a barge, standing cheek-to-cheek?
Look at all them tourists goooo!
As magical as it was, I didn’t want to linger on the island for the whole evening. I unlocked my bike and rode back near the apartment, and sought out yet another bakery I hadn’t tried. There I found a slice of quiche and a little chocolate eclair.
That’s 17 bakeries open after 7:00pm, within a 5 minute walk of the apartment.
That’s 17 bakeries open after 7:00pm, within a 5 minute walk of the apartment.
I was being careful with the amounts of things I ate, because I noticed some weight loss on the Rhineland bike tour and I wanted to keep the momentum. It felt easy to hold back, when I knew I was completely surrounded by amazing food, so close at hand that I could walk in any direction for less than one minute and find something great.
An ex of mine (who shall remain nameless because she was rather unkind) once said, “Being in Paris consists of a lot of ‘seeing of beauty.'” Since this was my first non-work day in the city, it was time to go do some of that!
I stripped all my luggage off the bike, leaving one bag with the camera in it. Everything else could stay locked behind this insane apartment door:
Out in the chaos of people, I made for Seine, the river at the center of the city.
I got a recommendation from friend Cara to try the hot chocolate at Angelina. It looked amazing but there was an equally amazing line, and the wait for a table was 70 minutes. So I hopped across the street to Tuileries Garden, and did some “seeing of beauty” instead.
This park is rather long. Note the tourist dragging his suitcase. Common thing: Pack up to leave your hotel room, then roll around for the day until you get on a train in the evening.
This park is rather long. Note the tourist dragging his suitcase. Common thing: Pack up to leave your hotel room, then roll around for the day until you get on a train in the evening.
I wandered the gardens with my “courtyard” playlist adding to the atmosphere — mostly stuff by Harold Budd and Stephan Micus, with the Coil album “The Agelic Conversation” mixed in.
I passed two large fountains ringed with chairs, and every chair was occupied, with crowds milling around them. There were at least three cafes partially under shade, and each had a line about 20 people deep. It was more like being in the middle of a farmers market than being in a park. Perhaps it’s some kind of post-COVID travel boom, but it really feels excessive, like, how do the actual residents of Paris even put up with this?
I also saw people – I couldn’t tell if they were locals or tourists – sitting with their feet deliberately across a second chair just to get a little more comfortable, even though literally hundreds of people, including elderly, were all around them and any one of them would have probably sat down given the chance. I was thinking, “Is this Parisians saying ‘screw you’ to the tourists, or is this tourists saying ‘screw you’ to each other? Maybe both…”
When I reached the other side, it was time to launch myself into the streets again to find that big pokey-uppey thing everyone’s heard about:
Cool! Now if someone dares me to prove that I’ve seen the pokey-uppey thing, I can show them this picture, which looks totally fake and exactly like all the other ones. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Meandering back to the north, I encountered a protest in progress.
This is a march about … Hmm. About apparent side-effects from the COVID-19 vaccine? What?
Several people were carrying anti-COVID-vaccine signs, but they were mixed with others I couldn’t parse. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what the protest was about. But it was very French.
After that, I found some more buildings to stand in front of:
Whoever’s buried here must be, like, important and stuff!
Whenever I step out, I bring an angel along to keep my drapes from falling off.
Some time after that I saw this poster on a wall, and was intrigued. With a little help from my phone I realized it was a concert happening the very next day, and I could still buy a ticket for it.
Back in 1992 I was gifted a CD with Mozart’s Requiem, and I played the heck out of it. It fed into my lifelong obsession with music. It’s one of the most popular pieces of “classical” music in the world, and for good reason.
I paused my random bicycling to eat another decadent snack, and try to buy a ticket with my phone. The interface was just a little bit broken. Perhaps that’s why there were still tickets!
We know they’re adorable, but they’re kinda causing problems, so quit leaving your food everywhere, huh?
One of the things I wanted to see was the Labyrinthe du Jardin des Plantes. Not much of a puzzle, but a refreshing walk:
I was starting to run out of daylight, but there was one more garden I could visit on my way to the apartment: Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris, commissioned by Henri IV in 1612.
When you’re pressed for time because there are so many things to see, and one of those places is a gorgeous park that’s been sitting around being gorgeous for 400 years, and one of the best ways to enjoy a park is to stretch out and read a book for the whole afternoon, but it’s already evening, what can you do?
All I could do was stroll around and take a few photos, and imagine that I’d been lounging on the grass all day.
