Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook. ← Previous Next
→ Back to the beginning
|
We’re back home in Paris after
five days in Berlin. It feels good to
be home. Berlin was interesting, and
we had the best guide anyone could possibly have, our dear friend
Arnold. I’ll be writing a separate
Berlin chronicle, after the fact because we had no time for taking notes or
writing while we were there. Stay
tuned – I will post the link to it in this Paris Journal. The effect of Berlin on the us was
surprising. Here in Paris, we started the
trip a bit awkwardly because we have not used the RER train to or from
Charles de Gaulle airport in years, and I just had not given any thought to
how we’d get to the airport. We
usually have too much luggage, so we take a taxi instead. For this little trip, we had
only one carry-on, so we went by train.
In the years since we’ve taken the RER train from the center of Paris
to the airport, the Gare du Nord station has been renovated. So even if our memory was perfect, it would
not have mattered. Things changed. Some not for the better. We started by taking the number
10 metro from Emile Zola to Odéon, then switching to the number 4 to Gare du
Nord to take the RER to the airport. That was our first
mistake. We should have taken the
number 10 from Emile Zola to Cluny la Sorbonne, where one can now take an
underground passage to the St. Michel RER station. Years ago when we tried to do this, the
underground passage was closed temporarily, so we just forgot about its
existence. If we’d gone directly to the
St. Michel RER station, we could have avoided the Gare du Nord altogether –
always a good idea if you can manage it.
And it is certainly a good idea to avoid taking line 4 of the metro if
you can. Second and simultaneous mistake
was that we used metro tickets to get to the Gare du Nord, where we planned
to buy the RER tickets. We should have bought the RER
tickets at Emile Zola where the ticket machine accepts paper money and
sometimes accepts foreign credit cards. The RER ticket would have been
good for the metro, too. But alas, we made these
mistakes, and then we had to navigate the renovated Gare du Nord to find the
RER ticket machines and the entrance to the RER. This brought us through a
maddening series of turnstiles in which we had to use the metro ticket again
and again, and Tom had to struggle with the carryon suitcase. I’m sure that having all these turnstiles
reduced crime in the Gare du Nord, but it sure is annoying. Finally, we arrived in the
large anteroom where the ticket machines are located just before the entrance
to the RER. The ticket machines would not
accept foreign credit cards like our American mastercard which has no chip,
or “puce,” as the French cards
have. I know that the transportation
authority, RATP, is changing some of the ticket machines in the metro and RER
stations so that they will accept foreign cards, and you would think that
these new machines in the Gare du Nord of all places would have been
changed. But no, none of these
machines would accept the American credit card. That would not have been a
problem if the machines accepted paper money
like the machine in the Emile Zola metro station does. It costs 17 euros for two RER tickets to
the airport. So, one has to use coins, and
there is no machine there for changing paper money to coins. It takes 8 two-euro coins plus a one euro
coin to buy these tickets, and we just didn’t have that many coins. So we had to stand in line at
the lone ticket window. The line was
not moving at all because of a family that was having difficulty for some
reason in buying tickets, and they would not step aside. Tom made several more attempts
at the ticket machine while I stood in the motionless line. Finally, he decided to use his metro ticket
once again to leave the anteroom and go back out into the commercial part of
the station where he bought newspapers and got change from the vendor. The vendor had no problem at all with
giving change to Tom; I’m sure people hand this vendor one and two euro coins
all day long. When he came back, I’d actually
moved forward about two feet in line because the family with ticket buying
woes had finally moved on. I watched
while he used a machine across the room to buy two RER tickets. It accepted all of his coins,
purported to deliver the tickets, but Tom could not find them. It turns out the slot where the tickets
drop is way, way down, almost at the level of the floor. Well, maybe one foot up from the
floor. And it isn’t labeled or marked
with an arrow or anything. At last he found the tickets in
the unmarked slot and he came over to free me from the line. The people in line behind me were happy for
our success, and maybe a bit envious, but at least my departure made the line
a bit shorter. Moral of the story: buy the RER tickets in advance and avoid
the Gare du Nord. If you must start
the RER trip at the Gare du Nord and you don’t have your tickets yet, bring
lots of coins. Coming back into Paris
yesterday was easy, because first of all, the machines at the airport RER
station accept the foreign credit cards.
Some of them also accept paper money.
Once I got the machine to accept my credit card (on the third try) and
I was able to purchase the RER tickets.
I was so excited about this that I also purchased a book of ten metro
tickets because we will need them in the weeks ahead. We took the RER to the St.
Michel station and found the underground passage to the Cluny la Sorbonne
metro where we easily took the number 10 line home to Emile Zola. After relaxing only briefly in
the apartment, we went out to dine at the brasserie on the corner at the
Commerce park. Food was simple and
good, and the service was not deranged this time. It was friendly and efficient. It is good to be home. |
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Fountain in the Square Gabriel Pierné at the top of the
rue de Seine. Pierné was the
organist at the St. Clotilde basilica from 1890 to 1898. His predecessor and teacher was the famous
César Franck, a Belgian composer and organist.
The attractive Galerie Downtown, operated
by François Laffanour, at number 33 rue de Seine. The gallery features furniture from the 20th
century.
The upper level of an old charcuterie façade has been maintained
above a gallery on the rue de Seine. |
