Monthly Archives: July 2023

On visiting Paris and Lyon in 2023

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Paris – note the Eiffel Tower – as seen from the dome of La Basilique du Sacré Cœur…

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July 24, 2023 – It won’t be long now. Next mid-September, two companions and I will hike the Stevenson Trail in France, starting in Le Puy-en-Velay. But first I’ll have to get there, through Paris, then by train some 280 miles southeast to Lyon. (A place I’ve never been.) I’ll stay two nights in each place, then take a train-and-bus combo some 84 miles southwest to Le Puy. (Oddly enough, getting to Le Puy from Lyon will take about as long as from Paris to Lyon.)

Those two nights each – Paris and Lyon – mean I’ll have some time for sightseeing. But that also means I have to plan carefully, to get the biggest bang for my buck. (So to speak.)

But first, Paris. After arriving at De Gaulle airport – early in the morning – I’ll take the RER Train B to the Gare du Nord. (18 Rue de Dunkerque.) Then (as I wrote about the 2021 trip), “out the exit past the Starbucks, and take a left and onto Rue la Fayette.” That’s assuming I can find the exit. In 2021 I had a heck of a time finding how to get from the lower level up to the ground floor and then out into the sunshine. (And a sidewalk cafe.) Here’s hoping experience is a good teacher.

In Paris I booked a room near the swanky Hipotel Paris Voltaire Bastille. It’s about a two-mile hike from Gare du Nord, but I’ll have some time to kill. Check-in isn’t until 2:00. From there – barring jet lag – I’ll have some sights to see. In 2021 I wanted to visit a place on the outskirts, Choisy-le-Roi. On my first visit in 1979, a young lady-friend and I camped at a youth hostel there. In a little tent, “very romantic,” between the Seine and Marne Rivers. (“Is the hostel still there?”)

This trip too it would be nice to visit La Basilique du Sacré Cœur de Montmartre.

Shown at the top of the page, the Basilica is “at the summit of the butte of Montmartre.” Said to be visible from most parts of Paris, it also offers a great panorama of the city itself. Plus it would be nice to visit Montmartre, interested as I am in Impressionist painting and painters. But to get to either Choisy-le-Roi or Montmartre I’ll have to take the Métro, said to be the haunt of numerous Pickpockets and Scams. I’ll let you know how that works out. Or I may just say the hell with it and confine myself to walking tours based around the Île de la Cité.

On that note, it turns out my room is less than a mile from the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where notables like Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried. Plus it’s a nice shady place for a walk – without a pack – through its wooded 106 acres. And when it’s time to leave Paris, the room is a mere mile hike to Gare Lyon, for my train down for two nights in Lyon.

Speaking of Lyon, I once wrote that – as I once thought – hotels were cheaper there than in Paris. That turns out not to be true. For some reason, most places I checked added on either a hefty “cleaning fee,” or a hefty damage deposit. (Supposedly refundable but I hate paying “deposits.”) That routinely doubled the price of what I thought at first was an affordable room. I ended up paying more for two nights in Lyon than two nights in Paris.

I finally booked a do-able room just across the Rhone River from “Presqu’île,” the peninsula center-of-the-city formed by the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. As in Paris, I’ll get to Lyon before noon, some hours before check-in. But the room is only another two-mile, 45-minute hike, from the Gare de Lyon-Perrache. And on the way is the Damn Fine Bookstore.

It’s billed as one of the few places to get books in English outside Paris. Plus it has a cafe, where I’ll spend some time between arrival and check-in. Then too, once it’s time to head down to Le Puy, it’s only a little over a mile hike from the room to the Lyon Part Dieu station, where I head southwest. Getting there on time won’t be a problem. I don’t leave Lyon until early afternoon.

Back to that room in Lyon. It’s less than a mile to Place Bellecour, third-largest public square in France. More important for me is it’s less than two miles to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. Like the Paris Basilique du Sacré Cœur, it too is said to offer a spectacular view of the city. And speaking of those two church towers – Paris and Lyon – the dome of the Basilica of the Sacréd Heart of Montmartre is said to have 300 steps to the top. The dome of the Basilica of “Our Lady” (the Virgin Mary) is said to have 287 steps to the top. With the other walking tours I’ll make in both cities, climbing those 587 stairs all the way to the top – and back down again – will be good training. Good training for that 15-day, 150-mile hike on the Stevenson Trail.

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The upper image is courtesy of View From Sacre Coeur Basilica Montmartre – Image Results.

In writing this post I used past posts like Countdown to Paris – 2021, Hiking over the Pyrenees, in 2021 – finally, A post-trip post mortem for “Paris – 2021,” and Gearing up for the Stevenson Trail.

On “Bang for buck,” see Wikipedia on the idiom of getting “greater worth for the money used:“

The phrase “bigger bang for the buck” was notably used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s Secretary of Defense, Charles Erwin Wilson, in 1954. He used it to describe the New Look policy of depending on nuclear weapons, rather than a large regular army, to keep the Soviet Union in check.

I didn’t know that last bit of history, one reason I enjoy blogging. Those “rabbit trails…”

For more the Sacré-Cœur Basilica see the Wikipedia article.

On the Paris Metro’s “Les pickpockets,” see How to Avoid Pickpockets and Scams in Paris, Pickpocketing Has Skyrocketed in Paris Over the Past Year, and The Paris Pickpocket: How to Recognize and Avoid Them. Or Google. The Eiffel Tower is said to be the place they like best.

On “15 days,” etc. That includes two days off, not hiking. My brother Tom figured 151.3 actual miles hiking, though with two question marks for miles figured for two days near the end of the hike.

The lower image is courtesy of View From Basilica Of Notre-dame De Fourviere Lyon – Image Results. See also Basilique Notre Dame De Fourviere, Lyon | Ticket Price, indicating a price of six Euros, and that the best time to visit is between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m.

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Still pushing the envelope, at “ripe old” 72…

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At 72 I could turn into a crusty old curmudgeon, or still have Mountaintop Experiences…

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July 10, 2023 – In Gearing up … Stevenson Trail I noted that in September – a mere two months from now – I’ll fly back to Paris. From there I’ll join my two hiking companions and start the Robert Louis Stevenson Trail. (In Le Puy-en-Velay, 340 miles southeast of Paris.) Which brings up a post I did some time ago, on why an old guy like me would keep on doing things, like a multi-day 150-mile hike in a far-away foreign country. (Like Italy’s Way of St. Francis last year, and before that three separate hikes on the Camino de Santiago.)

John Steinbeck explained it pretty well. He began Part Two of Travels with Charley by noting the many men his age who – told to slow down – “pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood.” (They “trade their violence for a small increase in life span.”) But that wasn’t his way:

I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage…  If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway. I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It’s bad theater as well as bad living.

In plain words he didn’t want to turn into just another old fart, and neither do I. (I.e., an older person, typically male, who holds “old-fashioned views.”) By the way, that Free Dictionary definition has a disclaimer, that the page “may contain content that is offensive or inappropriate for some readers.” To which I would say, “Get over it, Nancy!”

And speaking of old farts, Steinbeck was 60 years old when he wrote Travels, including that stuff about Old Age. To which I would say, “Punk! And young punk at that!” (Oh to be 60 again… Not!)

But we were talking about 150-mile hikes in foreign countries, and why an old guy would still do them. Partly because they are pilgrimages, giving us a break from “real life,” from the rat race. That last part doesn’t really apply to me; I’m retired and can enjoy life. But as we started to say on the Way of St. Francis last year, “It sure beats playing bingo at the Senior Center!” Aside from that, a pilgrimage can be “‘one of the most liberating of personal experiences.” And on a Camino hike that hot shower, warm bed and cold beer at the end of each day helps too.

Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to be guilty of Bad Theater. Then too, my brother Tom – one hiking companion next September – reacted to a past-pilgrimage blog-post and had this to say:

Read your blog on the trip and I think there is one point where you give [undue] credence to the view of the “pat-pat” people of the world. The issue is the idea that only people, “not in their right minds,” would go to places (or do things) that are unique experiences – ones that most others never have. In my mind, this is exactly what people in their right mind should be doing. I pity those who don’t.

Which mirrors what Stevenson said in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. (On his 12-day, 120-mile solo hike through sparsely populated, impoverished Cévennes in south-central France.) He described one night setting up camp in a place “black as a pit, but admirably sheltered.” He ate a crude dinner – a tin of bologna and some cake, washed down by brandy – then settled in, despite the tempest around him. As he put it, “The wind among the trees was my lullaby.” He woke in the morning “surprised to find how easy and pleasant it had been … even in this tempestuous weather.” He then waxed poetic, in part about seeking such adventure all his life:

Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?

On a Camino hike today you focus, you concentrate solely on getting up in the morning and reaching that day’s down-the-road destination. On how good the fresh-squeezed orange juice and Café Crème taste now, and how good that first cold beer at the end of the day’s hike will taste. You are mindful. You experience the eternal now. In plain words you don’t give a rat’s ass about the future and what problems it might bring. That in itself is liberating.

These days we have plenty of future to worry about. (Things that might happen but hopefully won’t.) So it’s rewarding to take a break from the nowaday sleepless nights and concentrate on reaching today’s destination, everything you own on your back, and looking forward to that hot shower, warm bed and cold beer. Or it could come down to this basic lesson in life: “To have a mountaintop experience, you have to climb the &^*@$# mountain!”

I dread the day when I have no more mountains to climb…

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The upper image is courtesy of Jeff Dunham Walter – Image Results. Jeff Dunham is a ventriloquist with puppet characters including “Walter.” See Walter | Jeff dunham Wiki | Fandom: “Walter is a retired, grumpy old man with arms always crossed in discontent… He has a brash, negative and often sarcastic view on today’s world.” For a live version see Some of the Best of Walter | JEFF DUNHAM – YouTube, about “your favorite opinionated, gray-haired grump in the trunk.”

Re: Curmudgeon. Per Wiktionary, an ill-tempered person, usually old, full of stubborn opinions or ideas.

Re: “Nancy.” I was thinking of “walk it off Nancy,” something like “rub some dirt on it” in a sport setting. Meaning to “be strong,” “be tough” or “stop complaining,” as when you suffer and injury. See also Urban Dictionary: Negative Nancy, referring to a killjoy, someone constantly negative about everything in life, and also referring to “Nancy boy” as an effete male. Or someone “uncomfortable in their own skin,” in the world around them or with social situations around them. Who knew?

Re: Stevenson’s book, considered a “pioneering classic of outdoor literature.” See also my post On donkey travel – and sluts.

The lower image is courtesy of Mountaintop Experience – Image Results. See also I’ve Been to the Mountaintop – Wikipedia.

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