Monday 3rd. A Bus Ride.

Trip Start Apr 30, 2004
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Trip End May 09, 2004


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Monday, May 3, 2004

After a excellent breakfast at the hotel (€6.00), we set out to visit Notre Dame Cathedral just across the river. The crowds are gone and we share the square in front of the Cathedral with a reduced number of fellow tourists, a lot of regulars and some school groups. Perfectly manageable. Inside the Cathedral it is quiet and uncrowded. It's a beautiful church, especially the glorious rose windows. We do the circuit and exit onto a side street, continuing to the rear of the building where there is a lovely park beside the river. One part is dedicated to the thousands of French people deported and exterminated by the Nazis in World War Two. http://ndparis.free.fr/ (This web site is in French, but it is beautifully done, with great pictures.)

We cross the Seine on Pont St. Louis onto the Island of St. Louis. http://ilestlouis.away.fr/index2.html. This charming area is one of the oldest parts of Paris and has a village-like feel 01. L'Ille St. Louis.
01. L'Ille St. Louis.
 . It has been an elegant enclave of exclusive residences and shops since the 17th. Century. We wander down the main Rue St. Louis en l'Ile lined with pretty boutiques and stylish restaurants. We stop at a tiny grocery store to buy water and cheese and also enter a fascinating toy shop to purchase a tiny red Citroen 2CV just like the one we had in Lima. If I lived in Paris, I would live here, even though it would probably be out of my reach financially.

At the end of the street are the Boulevard Henri IV and the Pont de Sully. Here we await the bus to Montmartre on which we hope to relax and enjoy the Parisian cityscape from the comfortable seat of a municipal bus.

Finally our bus arrives, and our hopes of a comfortable seat are dashed as we struggle aboard and stand crushed in the mass. We see our cityscape over the heads of our fellow passengers. One by one we are able to snag seats, and in a short while, are all seated enjoying the ride. The 67 bus will take us through the boulevards of Paris, where we will change to the little Montmartrobus. After a delightful ride we arrive at Pigalle, the infamous red light district of Paris, though not very wicked at 10:30 in the morning. As we alight, we see the tiny Montmartrobus approaching and we rush to the corner to board it, but It just sails right past us. We see a small queue of people on the other side of the traffic circle anxiously waiting the bus and the penny drops that just as in every cultured country, you have to board a bus at a bus stop. We have been spoiled by Latin America, where as soon as you raise your hand, multitudes of battered buses battle for your business. We risk our lives bounding across the busy Boulevard de Clichy. The driver kindly waits for us and we cram inside the diminutive vehicle. It's packed, but it's a short ride up the winding narrow lanes, tiny squares and terraces of Montmartre to the renowned Place du Tertre.
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