The city of love, rain, and confusion: Paris [7/05-7/07]

Deciding that I could save some money and just ride into the city from CDG Airport, I assembled my bike in the parking garage, left the box behind and set onto the expressway towards downtown Paris. A vast change from lonesome Iceland, riding alongside the 6 lane expressway was kind of sketch but at least the shoulder was wide. Almost immediately I started getting what I thought were congratulatory honks and salutes from truckers (I'd heard that the French love bikes so I thought they were cheering me on.) Eventually when the traffic backed up and I was alongside a boxtruck, the driver yelled something in French... responding to my confusion, he first made "pedalling" motion with his hands, follwed by the "you can't do that here" indication. So I guess the honks were not so much cheering me on, rather telling me to get the heck off this highway.

It was another 10min before I got to an exit ramp, after which I immediately got disoriented and lost. The free map I'd picked up from Avis Rental Car was little help, but I eventually found my way to the Saint Daniel area where an Office de Tourisme provided a slightly better map. After my first French cafe coffee and a Nutella crepe from a street market, it was another hour through the outskirts into downtown.

in a city this old, efficiency has evolved

Having only an address recomended by my ex-patriot friend Mike, I found the hostel I was hoping for and to my great luck they'd had a cancellation and therefore a bed for me for the night. The next day I'd have to transfer to another of their locations in the same neighborhood, but paid for them both and felt relieved that my city lodging was accounted for.

only my 2nd night in a bed in 5 weeks!

When I set out on my (now unloaded) bike towards a street market for lunch, I found the vendors packed up just as it started raining... really hard. I made a few quick turns to seek shelter under a parking area, again disorienting myself, and proceeded to spend the next several hours completely lost although always within a mile or so of my hostel. I simply could not make sense of this city: no streets meet at right angles, there is no grid whatsoever, and the street names change after almost every intersection. So you can be literally on the correct street, but it doesn't have the name you are looking for... so it was a long, wet frustrating afternoon.

at least someone's happy

The next day I elected to ditch the bike and stick to slower paced walking, hoping to maintain my bearing as I wandered around some of the main attractions: Notre Dame, the Louvre, Champs Elysses, the Eiffel Tower, Champs de Arms, and so on. It stormed again while I was milling around the Eiffel Tower and gawking at the tourists waiting literally hours to get into the tower. Waiting with tourist just ain't for me, so I was happy to keep walking once the rain subsided.

Overall, Paris is an amazing city- old, sophisticated, classy, confusing, wet, and in my currect state of mind I found it to be overwhelming and lonely. It'd be a graet place to come back to with a companion and a bunch of money to spend. A highlight was seeing my old Boulder friend Mike, who's lived here for the past 3 years. It was great to catch up, to hang out with him and his english-speaking friends, and see the first familiar face in a month.