Patti: Riding a bike in Paris is amazing! We spent the day yesterday doing so and had a blast. It helped that it was another warm, sunny day. Our accommodations are in a suburb about 7 km from the actual road port into Paris. We have a cycle route that takes us through a beautiful park and since we have now ridden out of Paris twice and into Paris once (from where we are staying), we think we have our directions figured out.
For a day of not travelling, we still put 45 km on our bikes. We rode to Sacre Coeur and, although a pretty steep climb, it seemed easy since we are now riding without our trailers and gear. I had a great view of the city from the dome of the basilica (thanks for the tip, Dodi).
Our next destination was the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a nice piece of architecture but the best part about being there, again, was because of the bikes. There is a traffic circle that goes around the arc and there are no less than 12 roads that feed into it. It is a frenzied mish-mash of cars and bikes. I’m sure from above it looks like some sot of choreographed dance with perfect timing of vehicles/bikes entering and exiting the circle. When Amy and I got around the circle (safely) we looked at each other and said we had both imagined how fun it would be to just continuously ride around the circle for a few loops. We did just leave it to our imaginations and didn’t choose to press our luck.
There are many bikes lanes in Paris and the drivers are incredibly respectful of your space and typically give you the right of way. Pedestrians are much more dangerous, it seems. On our ride back to where we are staying, our timing just so happened to be during rush hour. As well, we discovered at some point during the day that the buses are on strike in Paris. Some of the bike lanes are shared with buses so with the buses not on the road, these lanes were very fast moving. There seemed to be a million bikes on the streets, some looking like they hadn’t been on a bike for year but resorted to this form of transportation because of the strike. There was so much sensual stimulation during this ride with the sounds and the sights and the smells and the feeling of the wind; AWESOME!!!
