Day 4 In Paris

Grand Tour

In which Sid and Doris settle into their little flat and explore the neighbourhood.

Sid and Doris do the home breakfast thing with baguette, croissants, pain raisins, pain au chocolat, juice and coffee. It is not an early start. No pedaling today but much foot action.
Today’s plan is to go through the Marais, mostly in the 4th arrondissement and then across L’Ile St Louis and to come back across Ile de la Cite to see what has become of Notre Dame Cathedral since the fire. Early on we see conveyance of the day: a scooter called Django, in orange.
As singers we are pleased to see the fly posting for the 34th Music Festival en l’Ile [although closer scrutiny of one poster seems to imply a finger-in-ear style typical of a very particular sort of folk singing.  All together now: “Oi loike to roise when the sun she roises; Earloi in the mor…ning.” D]  The debate over how dangerous singing is goes on. Sadly they have decided to cancel, which is a shame. A peaceful Faure Requiem might be very soothing and appropriate just now. Other events only a few days away are still being promoted but we will be gone. 
Around Christmas 1975 a younger Sid stayed in the MIJE youth hostel in rue Fauconnier. Walking past brought back memories of the boys and girls he knocked about with. Sid acted as translator when one of a group of Californian girls needed a doctor. And from there he was included in their train trip to Barcelona. They had offered their Spanish as a return for Sid’s French, though Mexican Spanish turned out to be less understood in Catalonia. Of course Sid had Homage to Catalonia in his rucksack and later had to play ‘cross the border like a smuggler’. Do Sids ever grow up?

Just down the street is a nursery school. In 1975 France was just getting around to the idea that not everyone had joined the Resistance. This plaque shows that the reckoning has developed.

Sid is a Simenon fan and is gradually reading all 75 of the Inspector Maigret novels, though in no particular order. Several of the plots involve Seine bargees so Sid was pleased to see the traffic on the river.
Pausing only to take on ice cream (and marvel at how the Berthillon family has monopolised cafes on L’Ile St Louis) Doris steered us around to see Notre Dame from the far side of the river (including what looks like the world’s longest-armed crane) and then onto  Ile de La Cite.
 

On 15 April 2019 the roof caught fire. The beams had been up there drying out since the 13th century. The spire, only replaced by Viollet le Duc in the 1840s, fell through the roof. There is now fabulous work going on to clear the roofers’ molten scaffolding caught up in the fire, to clean, stabilise and rebuild. What a project, and a definite candidate for today’s #kindnessandingenuity. All very well explained on the hoarding around the sight. M.Macron has vowed it will be repaired in time for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, work goes on around the clock. Surely coming to the National Geographic TV channel soon. [Sid is behind the times, there is already an entire series on NGTV called “Saving Notre Dame” – D.]

 
Home to our little rented flat which is in one of so many private Parisian courtyards.  The Marais area is one of the older sections of Paris, and the building is just casually old.  The courtyard is accessed through one of thousands of painted double doors on Parisian streets that give no hint of what lies behind them (The flat is actually the two open windows over the cafe in the picture, btw).

We have had a slightly sobering conversation with some great friends of ours, in which they delicately conveyed that given the high Covid nature of Paris and their own nervousness, they would really be more comfortable if we didn’t go and stay with them in two days time in their French house.  And we agree with them 100%.  Last night’s street scenes were worrying.

We take advantage of having the little flat to cook our own dinner and dine in splendid virus-free solitude.