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.
