Goodbye Bike, Boat, Skateboard, Thumb; Hello Metro

Near Normal Public Transport Restores Paris to Life

Down the escalators, to the Metro; choice of three lines. The sign at the turnstile said, "Trafic normal sur tout le reseau - Sauf - L 10 exploitee entre Austerlitz + Charles Michel... Intervalle 20 min. Gratuite sur toute l'Ile-de-France." The line 10 doesn't run through St Lazare, so there was nothing to worry about.

The sign at the Metro turnstile says, "Free for the entire Ile-de-France.

Went through the tunnels to Line 13 - it was not the line I wanted; I forgot to look at the Metro map, just normal, and off through the tunnels again. Just missed a train. Another came in four minutes. Four minutes! It looked normal; inside there were few passengers, but it was normal for the time of day. The ride to Sevres-Babylone was normal. Went out the wrong exit, which was normal.

There were a lot of people about, especially near the Bon Marche, the Left Bank's only real department store. There were a lot more people in the rue St Placide, because it is narrower, and there was really a lot of people on the rue de Rennes, from St Placide to Montparnasse because there always are. It was still damp, cold and grey.

Demonstration by night; marchers lead by CGT under streetlights in Paris tonight.

On the rue de Rennes, there is always a lot of traffic, and a lot of it is always trying to turn right at the post office. There is no light there, and pedestrians determinedly cross, on their way down to Fnac and Tati. Cars were honking. They all know it is hard to turn right there and they normally wait patiently, but today they were not patient. When I looked closely, all the traffic looked nervous. Still in it. We Metro riders are out of it, and the honking is really annoying.

Turned around and drifted down rue de Rennes towards the Latin Quarter. The traffic on the boulevard St Germain was more relaxed, with less honking. Less Latin? At boulevard St Michel, nothing amiss, and on to Place Maubert, down an alley to the Seine quai and back to Pont au Double. In front of Notre Dame (towers closed for renovations) there were 35 tourists, some card sellers and a couple of cops; one flic and one flicette.

Straight across the Pont d'Arcole to the Place on the Hotel de Ville, where there is a big tent put up by Sicily - perhaps for puppet shows - and realized that this was the destination of today's demonstration. I love a party but, it was damp, cold, greyer, and now windy as well.

The Metro entrance is there, across from the BHV; the Metro was still free and I rode west on the fast line one under the rue de Rivoli and the Champs-Elysees, to La Defense, where I crossed the length of the hall to connect to the SNCF again.

The train came in five minutes, and I went home without finding what I had been looking for. I didn't find the compass I was seeking. I'll try again tomorrow, if the rides are still free and on time.

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