Thursday, June 19, 2008

080618 Bike Tour of Paris.

080617 Bike Tour of Paris.

We all loved the bike ride around Paris. The French have such a relaxed attitude about where the Parisians can freely ride a bicycle - they certainly have no rules regarding where they can park their bicycles. There are bikes everywhere.
The bicycle tour started at the Notre Dame Cathedral were we walked for a few minutes to collect our bikes. The office for the bike tours was a little oasis of modern luxury. Everything that I had seen in Paris up to this point had been either built, renovated or burned down in the 16th century. I tried to get a drink from a vending machine with my railway ticket - this may sound like strange behaviour for an Australian but it is perfectly acceptable for a resident of Hong Kong.
I was given a strange little folding bike that was made for someone about 50 kilograms lighter. All my children came to me in turns and asked me to help them adjust the seat and handlebars - including Alex who is eighteen in a few weeks. It must be a dad thing. The brake levers were in the opposite hands for me - that is, the left hand operated the front brake and the right hand almost operated the rear brake so that when I squeezed it as hard as I could, there was a perception that my speed was reducing and it made a scraping sound as if to warn pedestrians of the impending collision.
The tour group headed off into Paris like a herd of cats. There were bikes stopping and falling, bikes going ahead faster than the tour leader and others tootling along behind. The first stop was for a safety brief, which was brief - “Stop at red lights.”
There is an unwritten understanding that little cars make a little beep, big trucks make a big blast on an air-horn and, generally speaking, the sound of the horn is roughly proportional to the vehicle making the noise. As I was riding along I heard a bell ringing, like an ice-cream vendor - I was surprised to see that it was the sound of a city council bus.
Our tour guide was a handsome American who reminds me of, but does not necessarily look like, Bill Pullman and he certainly knew enough about Paris and its history to be interesting but more importantly and he also knew enough about people to know what to say and when to stop. He spoke clearly and projected his voice above the Parisian din without being overly loud and obnoxious. He knew where to stop so that a swarm of inexperienced cyclists could instinctively park safely. He selected some quiet side streets that made for a peaceful and relaxed
amble through Paris.
We rode our bikes around the pyramid at the Louvre.
I fell off my bike near the house were Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables.


Our tour guide pointed out an odd bit of graffiti - a tile mosaic of a space invader. Although interesting, he seemed to think that this tiny part of Paris was an essential part of the culture. He explained in great detail how the artist was a mystery and there are five hundred or so of these things around the city. No one has ever seen the artist, they appear overnight. The artist is akin to the Amazing Spider-Man in agility and cunning. I think that the tour guide is the artist. He knows too much and is too interested.


We stopped for lunch at an alfresco cafĂ© in the middle of a bustling street surrounded by typical four-story apartments. There were crowds of people and swarms of Vespa scooters. Parisians sat with their laptop computers while a stout elderly local stood in the middle of the road, in the middle of the crowd and played an accordion until someone paid him some money to go and play somewhere else. The space was filled with people, motor scooters, musicians, waiters, people walking dogs, people talking on their phones, people wearing suits and people of all countries. All this occurred in the space of a few metres. Carolyn ordered some local French food for us and she was instantly accepted as a local. We ate fresh crusty bread filled with exotic, aromatic salami, ham and fresh local salad complimented by a rich combination of mayonnaise and mustard. The French have different names for their bread rolls the same way the Eskimos have different names for snow. The French know that it is not only the recipe and the constitution of a bread but also the shape of a roll makes it different, it changes its attitude and its presence and therefore the very role it plays in making a meal an occasion. The type of roll that I had had a firm but submissive crust that was supportive of its precious and hefty cargo and yet delicate with its grasp. It had the colour and texture of summer wheat swaying gently in the fields and was punctuated with contrasting defining flecks of darkened sesame. It tasted like bread. The size and shape was expertly crafted to be confidently controlled with one hand and yet able to provide a generous and healthy “7/9th full” portion.


The kids loved the bike tour. I think that they really enjoyed riding a bike and being together as a family. We could have gone for a bike ride together anywhere in the known universe and they still would have enjoyed it. They are really looking forward to going to Versailles, not so much because of the art and the culture, but because they have heard that we will go for another family bike ride.


The French are seen by some as “snooty” - I see them as confident. French history has an amazing number of artists, scientists and general all round good guys. The French do not see the need to learn to speak English because they have a perfectly serviceable language of their own. The French have an interesting relationship with their government which is simple - they seem to say “We have burned down a palace and cut the head off our king for not giving us a fair go so we will think nothing of doing that to a mere mortal of a prime minister.”
The French have good reason to be happy with France as it is - they invented the metric system, radio and scuba diving. That is a pretty impressive list, and I say that coming from a country that proudly proclaims introducing the world to the Hills Hoist, the lawn mower and rubber thongs.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/france.shtml
http://www.bikeabouttours.com

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