"Into the Wild": a film worth seeing.

Sean Penn really hit the nail on the head with this one! A film which truly moved me and made me think about my own life and aspirations.

Bike ride to Versailles

I needed some time to get my thoughts straight, so I took a bike ride from Paris to Versailles yesterday. It’s great to know that you can escape the city without the need to take a car or train trip. Personally, I love the feeling of independence. It’s easy, too: plenty of bike tracks criss-cross the suburbs. The one below is in the centre of Versailles.

I bought the IGN 1:25 000 map number 2314 OT (Paris forets de Meudon). This helped enormously, because it is extremely detailed. You get a massive 1cm for every 250m in real life. I was able to avoid cars almost all day. Also, buying it meant that I had an excuse to visit my favourite shop in the city: Espace IGN, 107 rue de la Boétie, just off the Champs-Elysées. If you like maps, allow an hour or two in here.

The basic route that I took is: Arc de Triomphe - Porte Maillot - Bois de Boulogne - Passerelle de l'Avre (photo above) - Parc de Saint Cloud - Foret Domaniale Fausses Reposes - Versailles. I'd recommend this route to anyone. One or two easy climbs and great views of Paris from up on the western hills.

It was good to be riding my bike. I’m not sure how many kilometres I did, because I couldn’t make my Sigma computer work. Never mind. The air was fresh and the forests had the steely smell of winter. I took it easy.

Having done a “tour of honour” of the lake in the gardens of the Chateau de Versailles, I headed back into Paris, along the wintry Route de L'Impératrice (below) as the light began to fade.

2008: Bonne année

My feelings concerning 2008 are best expressed by the following image:

Relationships are tough at the end

A busy month with a lot of intermittent translation and writing work, as well as English lessons to teach. I've been grappling with some paperwork, too, at the Parisian Chamber of Commerce. It’s a surprisingly beautiful building, with a huge and ornately painted dome at its centre.

I've been trying to decide what to do about an unsatisfactory relationship that I feel has been on a downhill slide for quite a long time. The simple thing to do would be to end it: but it feels pretty mean. This is a good person we're talking about... it’s never pleasant to cause pain by ending something. On the other hand, I can't really think of any other solution which would work well.

Not a good time. It's minus 4 degrees Celsius outside... Christmas Eve is only a week away.

Strike a pose: using the Vélib (city bikes) in Paris

Yesterday (Saturday:) the transport systems are still on strike, so I made the most of the beautiful sunshine to walk down through the centre of the city, taking care to only use roads with which I was not familiar. It was absolutely brilliant! I love just strolling around, watching people go about their business.


This is the Hotel de Ville in Paris - the city hall. When the city hall looks like this, you understand how the rest of the town has become so beautiful.

I stopped for a focaccia in a boulangerie and it was delish. I think that the enjoyment of decent food is about two things: fresh ingredients and a proper appetite. Both were in harmony yesterday afternoon.

One of the recurrent themes about this city for me is the energy that emanates from the pavements and the streets. I just feel totally energised by the atmosphere in Paris, and always have. I hardly ever go inside a shop when I'm out for a stroll, whatever the weather: unless it really is an unusal one. It's being outside that counts for me.

I had an interesting serendipitous meeting with Rebecca from New York, which is one of the enjoyable things about taking streets at random: you meet new people.

Then I took the Vélib system (city bikes) back home from Place de la Republique. It's a really practical and cheap way to get around, with a big basket on the front for your bag. A few words about Vélib, in case you’d like to use it yourself:

You can hire a city bike (called Vélib, pronounced Vay-lib) for only 1 Euro for a whole day: but you can only use it for half an hour at a time. That's important. Then you must return it to any one of the official bike stations that you see at the end of most streets.

After the first half hour of use, take it to any Vélib station - not necessarily where you started out. If you have already arrived at your destination, just leave the bike there in its stand, and walk off.

On the other hand, if you still have some way to go, the trick is to then wait two minutes, and then take the bike again (your free half hour is "reset" after the two minutes. Otherwise, you get charged another euro for the next half hour, and then the price goes up exponentially for subsequent half hours.) The trick, therefore, is to only do half hour trips, which you link together, and then you never pay more than the one euro fee for the whole day! And you can get anywhere in the city in half an hour. The number of trips you can make is unlimited as long as you don't exceed the 30 minutes per trip.

Here's a link to the web site, http://www.velib.paris.fr/ and you get English instructions at any Vélib station. You can sign up for the 1 Euro day pass at any Vélib station, but you leave a 150 Euro deposit (not debited) on your credit card.

Just a tip: never lock up the bike anywhere except at an official Vélib station where you slide it into a locking bike stand (photo above), because your 30 minutes will be ticking away and it might get stolen (there goes your 150 euro deposit). No locking it up to a lamp post while you pop into a boulangerie for bread...

So, I picked up a bike and rode home. Such a great system – unlike personally owning a bike, you can chose to use one for some of your day, as I did, and walk the rest of the way. Then pick up another bike later, wherever you happen to be. Another example of why Paris is my favourite place to live.

La question du travail: the question of work

Work, work, work. The French transport networks, SNCF and the RATP, are on strike again (today's the consecutive third day.) Thus, everyone tries to get round the city without the usual ease of hopping on a Metro train. It's pretty cold by Parisian standards, too: freezing fingers clutch their maps of the city. The city they should know better.

This photo shows the empty platforms at the main train station: Gare du Nord. I took it at the height of the morning rush hour!

I myself have acknowledged that I "need" to get a job, following a very pleasant year off. Just been thinking about what is really important in life.

So, yesterday I had an interview (in French) - I thought it went well, but the interviewer was giving nothing away. Wait and see on that one. I also used the Vélib city-bike system to ride across the city to hand-deliver another application. It was a perfectly crisp and sunny afternoon and the cycle routes in Paris are so significantly improved compared to a decade ago that I had one of those "I love my life" moments. Down by the river, you can ride through tree-lined avenues, on dedicated cycle routes, well separated from the road. Right from Place de la Concorde to the Eiffel Tower, in fact.

Then the evening was spent at the cinema, watching the excellent "American Gangster." Pretty well perfect, especially the soundtrack.

The night ended with a heavy argument with my partner. Darkness descends...