Canal Saint-Martin

This canal runs north to south, connecting a waterway with the Seine.  You can take the tour in either direction.  For a look at the canal tour company's website, click HERE.

We were staying at Bastille so that's where we started.  We ended up in north Paris, but returning home was downhill all the way, so we walked.  We stopped at Place de la Republic for dinner, where we had the choucroute & onion soup of earlier mention.

 A part of our tour boat as we were about to board.  That's Susanne in the yellow shirt, dark slacks.

Boarding. A bit of Susanne on the right. The captain greets us all.

It was one of those grand and glorious late summer days, warm in the sun but a light cool breeze. 

There's our good friend the Bastille column.

See that black hole just to the left of the red flag?  That's where we're going. The first mile or so is in a tunnel below Place de la Bastille and travels under Boulevard Richard-Lenoir before getting to the first locks. 

Here we are in the tunnel.  The white circles in the ceiling are open to the surface for light & ventilation.  

Yes, that last light at the end.  You can  brag that you've actually seen one...the light at the end of the tunnel.

Approaching the tunnel's end and the first lock.

 Entering the lock.

Filling with water.

Lock's full.  Moving on the the next.  The canal is narrow for this part of the tour.


The overhanging trees make a lovely sight.


The fellow in the white shirt on the right, next to the small white building is controlling the opening & closing of the locks.

 Another lock seems to overflow its gates as it begins to fill our lock to raise the boat.  This is all 19th century technology.  Only the power to move the gates & the controls are modern.

With the constant cycling of water rising and falling in the locks, the lock wall takes on a life form of its own.


This closeup is an interesting abstract photo of sorts.


Can anyone guess where I was on the boat when I took this shot through the porthole?


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One of our guides & also the photographer (what's a cruise without a photographer?) & one of the pedestrian bridges over the canal.

I could load you up with more locks shots, but let's move on.

The canal begins to widen so we see more of Paris. 

Modern buildings.    

More modern buildings.

A really wide part of the canal.  Large enough for boats to be permanently moored along the banks.

An older building,  a local Hotel de Ville, the city hall for this section of Paris.       

       

I had to shoot these buildings.  They seemed to be wrapped in duct tape.

That's a sister craft heading to where we started.  Towards the end of the tour, the canal narrows again.

We then left the boat to begin the walk back.   

But we had to have a shot of a canal lock from the pedestrian bridge.

Just So You Know

I haven't forgotten about the blog.  Thursday was our long day of travel home.  10½ hours Paris/Houston, 4 hours layover, then 3½ hours to Phoenix.

However, (in life there are always "howevers") well into the trans-Atlantic leg, a urinary tract infection took hold of me & progressed rapidly.

Long story short, arrived Phoenix Thursday evening in misery, spent a miserable night.  Off to the Urgent Care center as early Friday morn as they would take me, saw the doc & began the mend.  It wasn't until today/Sunday that I felt like anything.

I will do the Canal St. Martin post by Tuesday latest altho it may not be distributed until Wednesday.

Some comments on the flight.  We flew Air Canada over, Continental back.  The entertainment system on Air Canada is far, far superior to Continental.

What I did do right on Continental was to pay extra on the trans-Atlantic flight for bulkhead seats that gave us more leg room & more overall room in front of us, sort of a mini-cabin.  What it didn't do was allow is to recline further.  In Economy, it is so minimal.

The bulkhead was the separation between Economy & First Class.  So I got a ring-side seat to see what paying thousands of dollars extra gets you. You get a more comfy seat, only 5 across vs. 7 across in Economy & a much better recline.  You get hundreds of dollars in better food & drinks.

Is it worth it?.  At our age, if you can afford it, hell yes.  But a flight to Europe is marginal cost/benefit-wise.  Back in 2007 when we flew to New Zealand, I paid 100,000 miles per seat for Business Class (the flights are excruciatingly long) & was glad to do it.  It would've cost the same 100K miles per seat for Paris, not worth it.  We paid 55,000 miles each for these seats plus $398 total for the bulkhead & preferred check-in & boarding.

OK, I've blathered on photo-less long enough.  See you later this week.

Food & Misc Photos

This will be my last post from Paris, but not necessarily my last Paris post.  There's a Canal St. Martin cruise I haven't done (topical posts take a lot more work than adding misc. pics as they come along) & I'm sure there'll be interesting pics during our last 24 hours in Paris.  But I don't know how busy I'll be when we get back.

I talked about moules et frites but forgot to photograph them.  Well, we went back to Leon & remembered halfway thru the moules.

This is moules provencale.  There are lots of other ways to have them.  The portion is huge for us, so we share.  Lots of people can conquer a full pot on their own.  The frites are "all you can eat" so no one leaves hungry.

I learned about Raclette cheese in Geneva in the early '70's.


It is also a dish from the southeastern part of France nearest the Alps, a region called Haute-Savoie.

Basically it's a brick of Raclette placed under a heating element so that it melts.

It is served with the small boiled potatoes seen below.


















 




It's a do-it-yourself sorta thing.  Susanne turned the cheese away from the heat to scrape off the melted part onto her plate. 

The rind is also a very flavorful part of the cheese.

Take some potato, grab a cornichon (pickle) & don't forget the white wine...a Fendant if you're in Geneva or a Muscadet in Paris.

You're set!

We serve this at home in the winter.  A slice of Raclette in the microwave works.

And of course, a half liter of Carlsberg ain't so bad either.

Let's just call her "Mademoselle Noir".


































We have old friends dating back to 1999 when Susanne came to Paris to learn French.  It's complicated & involves an amazing coincidence of my knowing a fellow volunteer at the Scottsdale Police Department also knowing this family.  Long story short, the parents (Zina & Ali) live just outside Paris, one of their sons married an Arizona girl & this couple (Madjid & Margarita) now lives in Phoenix. 

By yet another coincidence, Madjid & Margarita's (M&M, we're S&S of course) visit overlapped ours by a few days.

So last night, we all had dinner at Zina & Ali's home.  Zina cooked one of my very favorite dinners, Algerian cous cous. 

This is a table set for cous cous.  Of course, in the rush to take the shot before we sat down to enjoy the delicious meal, I forgot to move the wine bottle & a few other things.  Can't exactly go back & re-shoot this. 

After the cous cous was fruit & cheese.

We brought a fruit mousse cake and with traditional mint tea, the dinner was complete.

We didn't have an extra person to take the photos, so it takes two to get all of us.

That's Zina between Susanne & me. Then Ali on my left & Margarita.

That's Madjid between me & his father, Ali.

We are truly people of coincidences...M&M have the same make & model of camera as S&S.

View at dusk from Z&A's balcony.  That's a soccer field lit up.

Hotel de Ville, Paris City Hall, to me the most beautiful building in Paris.  Shot taken on a walk-by.  Didn't get a chance to go close-up this trip.             

Statue of Jeanne d'Arc, Joan of Arc to us, or was it Ingrid Bergman, I get confused.

A wisp of a French girl who led them into battle against the Brits until captured & burned at the stake.   

The more famous Parisian column.  It's in the center of Place Vendome, also the location of a ritzy hotel called The Ritz.



        

Even More Misc. Photos

Place de la Concorde is the most famous square in Paris.  It is now a very, very busy traffic interchange.  But back in the days & years following July, 1789,  this is where the guillotines did their work.

It is the confluence of many views in all directions, where L'Enfant got his ideas for the layout of Washington, DC.

It was late in the day & the weather was threatening (but only threatening as it turned out) so the lighting is poor.  There's the ever present Eiffel Tower.













 

This is a telephoto lens view down the Champs Elysees past the Arc de Triomphe.  It's much longer than it looks.

Looking opposite Champs Elysees is the Tuilleries Gardens & the Louvre off in the distance.  That photo didn't turn out.

In another direction, across a Seine bridge is the National Assembly, the equivalent of our Capitol Building.

Looking opposite the Assembly is a street with the Madeleine Church at the end.  It was intended to look like the Parthenon.

And the odd fountain thrown in.  The French love fountains.

Susanne took this video (above) of a motley crew of musicians down deep in the Metro.  Hey, they're doing honest work!  And bringing joy to numerous folks.  One of the Paris gifts I've mentioned.

They're giving out free Cokes at Bastille!  Another Paris gift.

We were on our way to the omelet/croque dinner.  We arrived at the little bar/resto not far from the Coke distribution.  We sat down at an outdoor table & set down the Cokes.  The waiter insisted the Cokes had to be put away.  It is unfair to occupy a table & not buy anything.  I tried to explain that we were buying dinner, even tried to order.  Nope, the Cokes had to go.  Instead, we did.  Drank our Cokes in search of another place.  Found one, sat down, noticed a couple at another table each having a beer, accompanied by a Coke bottle on the table.  We have an expression when this sort of thing happens..."C'est Paris!!"

  

Our Victory guy doing his thing during a full moon.

The Holocaust took place here in France as the Jewish community was rounded up and shipped East into death camps.  But through the efforts of righteous gentiles who risked their lives, less than half were taken.   There are memorials all over Paris.  Please take the time to read this plaque.  A shot of the entire wall follows.  It's large.

 

The lowest cost, most eco-friendly, most easily parked form of wheeled transportation in Paris.



































A clever street performer.  Two cut-down fishing poles, some thick string suspended in a circle between the poles & some soapy water.  Throw in lots of practice & voila!   Giant bubbles...

The Citroeon 2CV (means deux chevaux, 2 horses, the 2-cylinder engine).  France's post-war answer to the VW Beetle.  Now a tour bus of sorts.  Wasn't comfortable back then.  Can't be very comfortable now.

Pieces of Notre Dame pop up everywhere in Paris.

The Seine is a working river.  Freight by day, dinner cruises at night.

Caught this young couple in a goofy mood.

C'est Paris!!!

8pm on a Saturday night in the busiest part of the Bastille entertainment area is a helluva time for a trash pickup.  C'est Paris!!

The par-tay has already begun.

 More par-tay.

Gives new meaning to the term "French Door".

Seen in the window of an instrument repair shop.  It can be yours for 9,200 euros, over US$13,000.

This photo was taken across the Metro tracks. It is for a tribute performance in October.

We discovered Joe Dassin while in Paris in the mid '80's.  He paralleled Neil Diamond (Jewish, born in New York) but went to France to become famous singing mostly in French.  We loved his music, bought his CD's.

(For the tango folks, some of his songs would make great cortina music)

On a subsequent trip we asked the store clerk if he put out anything new.  Got a strange look.  Further research found that he died  of a heart attack in 1980 at age 42.

Susanne always says it's the shoes that make the outfit.