I came here on a bike loaded for wilderness-level touring. I couldn’t help it, because that’s the load-out I used in Iceland and the bike has been stored in a basement, untouched, since the Iceland tour finished almost two years ago. When I got here – to a rented apartment on Rue de la Fontaine au Roi – I stripped all the bags and gear off the bike and threw them in a closet, and have been going around with nothing but a phone, some Airpods, a house key, and a very sturdy bike lock.
Tried this cafe a second time, but the mocha was no better.
Tried this cafe a second time, but the mocha was no better.
Parisians seem to love the recumbent. Of the thousands of bicycles I’ve seen so far in the city, I haven’t seen a single recumbent, so it gets a lot of commentary. I understand why it would be rare: Paris has turned out to be what I would call an “expert level” place for bicycling, much more so than any other giant city I’ve been to in Europe, and you need to be very good on a recumbent to avoid injury in a place like this. Relatively speaking, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and London are all easier.
Back in the US, I’d say New York is relatively easy, and so is most of Boston and Chicago. In terms of danger I’d say that Paris is not top of the list – downtown LA occupies that spot for me so far – but it’s a strong second place. It’s not fear of deliberate violence I’m talking about, but the risk of accident, from the sheer press of people and the contempt they show for the rules. And it bears repeating: This is Europe. I have yet to experience bicycle touring in, for example, Rio de Janeiro or Bangkok. I’m sure Paris would be way down the list by then.
The weather is perfect, but the air quality is pretty bad. I’ve noticed that smog laws in Paris are treated as suggestions, especially by people on ancient scooters and mopeds. While biking around I’ve encountered entire city blocks that stink of car exhaust to the point of making me feel physically ill.
And I’ve gone to believe that the French take a dim view of laws and government in general, which I suppose is great where personal freedom is involved but is also a barrier to organization and urban planning, even daily logistics:
Will a shop respect its own posted hours? Maybe. Will you get warning when a street is closed for construction? Maybe. Will the bus actually stop where the schedule says? Maybe. Will the postman deliver your package? Maybe. Will there be a bike lane? Maybe. Will it be on the left, right, or middle or the street? Take a wild guess! Will there be a delivery truck parked right on top of it? Maybe. Will the train be on time? Maybe. What platform will it arrive on? Nobody knows until 20 minutes before it’s due to leave, ever, even if that train line has been operating for years, and even then it may be wrong.
Every intersection is a free-for-all hash of bicycles, people, cars, and scooters. Crosswalks are a suggestion. Crosswalk signals are less than a suggestion; they are ignored. On the other hand, people almost never honk their horns regardless of the thickness of the snarl or who is technically at fault, because the response they are most likely to get is, “screw you, this is France.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. What sort of organization would I expect, from a nation whose most truly defining era is still the French Revolution? Where laws, for the vast majority of its history, were used to funnel wealth upwards first – into the laps of clergy and kings – and organize people second? The nation I come from owes an incalculable debt to the same thinkers and activists that drove the French Revolution, and the influence shows, but I get the impression that the French had to swing a lot harder to knock their tyrants off their posts, and that impact is still echoing around in the culture here.
That’s a cerebral place to go, starting from a description of the air and the traffic… No doubt it’s subjective and I’ll have other impressions as the days continue.
Today I sat in the restaurant where Amelie was filmed, and listened to music and a series of podcasts about Russia, and then a book about French history.
It was well weird comparing the current and former state of both countries, and asking the question that’s on a lot of minds this year: Can Russia ever change away from fascism and still remain Russia?
One of the people I listened to was Mikhail Shishkin, speaking as a guest on an Intelligence Squared podcast episode, titled “Is Russia Doomed By Its History?” He made a very sobering point: People who live in a fascist state, and do not oppose it, do not see themselves as fascists, and when their state attempts to bring fascism to a neighboring state through subjugation (e.g. war) they see themselves as liberators, rather than conquerors or subjugators. Since fascism is what they know and believe in, inter-state conflicts are not a matter of freedom versus subjugation, but a matter of a big fish eating a smaller fish. It’s kill or be killed in a zero-sum game, because there couldn’t possibly be a form of governance they could switch to that would move them even a little bit out from under the bootheel of the criminals at the top.
Want to escape from that restaurant in Amelie? Here’s how.
Besides, if you live in fear of your ruling party, then what better way to distract them from plundering you than encouraging them to plunder someone else?
Just so with the Russian people, over the last 100 years, inside and outside the USSR.
Anyway, I ate two lunches at the cafe, since I’d skipped breakfast and intended to skip dinner: A caesar salad with ham, and a rich avocado toast with salmon on top. As one should on a proper vacation, I ate slowly!
Lots of people came in to take photos of the place, giggle a bit, and then dash right out again. So to be a contrarian, I left without taking a photo of the interior. If it ever came up, I could certainly remember that I’d dined in the restaurant used in the film. I wouldn’t go scrambling for photographic proof of it and no one would ask. What, would they accuse me of being a liar? Maybe when I was 16 years old and boasting in a schoolyard. Not now. At the same time, that photo isn’t something I’d put on my wall or even in a screensaver. Most of my keepsakes are either highly portable digital items, or living things walking around looking after each other.
I followed this train of thought as I rode the bike over to the Cimetière de Montmartre. Alas, it was closed for the day…
Hmm, Montmartre cemetery closes at 6pm. Good to know. I’ll have to come back later…
I still remember the time when film was expensive and photographs were prized artifacts from an otherwise obscure and unseen era. That’s so thoroughly not the case now. And now we’re making our way into a realm where photographic evidence is no longer evidence of anything in particular, given that you can ask a computer to bake you an image of yourself doing whatever you can describe, in any place you can name. So what is the point of taking a photo when you do go there?
Maybe now you can start to relax and just be. You can even take the photo retroactively if the need arises.
It seems like a matter of time before we’re all wearing gadgets that take – or gather – photos of us everywhere by default. I’m imagining high-quality cameras all over the place that are not just used for city surveillance by the police, but made available to our phones (or whatever the gadget is), so when we want – if we want – we can just gather up dozens of photos of ourselves taken by these devices and aggregate them. You can imagine a camera on a stick planted in front of every scenic vista, constantly recording. People will embrace the implied total surveillance because of the convenience of sending a “selfie” to their friends and social media without even needing to reach into a pocket.
Roll that forward two or three decades, and we will not be carrying anything around at all, yet still able to gather photos of ourselves afterwards, interact with our personal digital worlds by talking to lampposts (since our voice and face is our password), pay with our fingerprint or our face, access transcripts of everything we’ve said, and so on. People will embrace total surveillance and recording because it will be fun. They’ll get to buy into it. And the old saying, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” will sound so very reasonable… That’s what they said in the USSR, as they dumped radioactive waste straight into the river…
I loathe this future.
The opportunities for exploitation will be practically infinite, and practically invisible. And as I get up and walk out into the seething crowd of tourists on this street, I’m asking myself a really frightening question:
At what point does a state become so exploitative – and skilled at crushing dissent through social manipulation and surveillance – that the people trapped permanently at the bottom of it have no other choice but to take up arms and start physically smashing the apparatus? Are we heading towards a level of lock-in through technological advancement so high that the ONLY way out is to beat down doors and set fire to mansions? Are we headed for another French Revolution, but on a global scale, with the attendant scale of death and chaos?
Huh. So that’s where it is. No desire to go inside currently, but, good to know.
Huh. So that’s where it is. No desire to go inside currently, but, good to know.
‘Cause you know, at some point, the food’s going to get too expensive even with fertilizer, and the water is going to get too expensive to clean, and the digital apparatus is going to be tightened and tweaked so that the wealthy keep eating, while the rabble drowns in poison.
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.
