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The Milavsky RV Letters
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Camping Europe in an RV |
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Letter 15 Bon jour! We would like to make it clear to our readers that all our letters are
written days after the events, so even though we use the present tense,
these events really took place in the past. Furthermore, it takes us several days to finish a letter.
That’s why we decided not to put a date on any letters.
It is too confusing. We went directly to Paris when we left Chartres.
There is a four-star campground in Paris in the Bois de Boulogne
which is on Paris’s west side just beyond the Peripherique, the circle
road around the city. It is a
huge camp, stretching for what looks like a kilometer or more alongside
the Seine. It is busy all year. There
were a lot of RV’s settled in when we arrived, just as there had been in
2003. The sanitary blocks are
numerous and clean, there is a restaurant and bar and a market that bakes
its own bread so you can get a fresh baguette every morning.
The spaces for RV’s are on gravel, each space separated from
others by hedges, with a lock and chain across the front.
You are issued a key for that lock when you register. Many of the
spaces could accommodate 40 foot RV’s with space to spare.
Middle-range rates apply this time of year.
The fee was a few cents more than 27 Euros
per night, all inclusive—electricity and hot showers, as well as
hot water to wash dishes and to shave. Getting into the city from there is more expensive than from
most other campgrounds because one has to take a bus from the campground
to the Metro station at Port Maillot.
The camp shuttle bus to the Metro station costs 3 Euros round trip.
Then you pay for the Metro tickets, 1.40 Euros each way.
There are no transfers between the Metro and the bus.
You can buy 10 tickets for 10.70 Euros or buy a visitor pass that
is good for transportation and museum entries.
This is quite expensive unless you really do go to the museums.
There is also a mobilis pass for 5.10 Euros.
If you buy this, you can use all transport except the distant
stations of the suburban train line, the RER, for 24 hours.
We bought that for two days and then bought the 10 ticket packs for
the remainder of the time we were there. This will be our last stop in France.
And visiting Paris is a great way to coast to the end of a
memorable journey. We have
stayed in Paris hotels a few times on other trips, and we spent a total of
two weeks here in our 2002 RV journey, visiting a number of different
museums. This time we decided
just to concentrate on walking around and experiencing the city. That is
what we did the first day. We
walked around, found an internet place and sent out a letter, had lunch in
a fast food restaurant that specializes in gyros, ordered coffee in a café,
walked around the neighborhood near Les Halles, and generally just hung
out. Paris, like Venice, is a city that is widely and justly recognized as
beautiful. We know that there
must be slums here because we know about the terrible fires that occurred
this year, but we have never seen any slums in our extensive walks.
To us, Paris is regal and elegant.
We see a city of stately residential neighborhoods of four to six
story buildings. (Picture
1 shows what we think of as a typical Parisian residential street.
This one is near the Gare de Lyon.)
There are shops, cafes, and, every so often, some huge building
that looks like a castle or a chateau.
(Picture 2 is of the beautiful Opera house.) The Seine snakes
through Paris providing sights of many beautiful bridges and promenades.
Everywhere there are places to sit, watch the water, or talk with
friends. Many times these
places were the scene of hugging and kissing – just as Paris is supposed
to be. (Picture 3 shows a building on the Seine called the Concergerie.
It began its life as a palace, but became a prison after the
monarchy moved to the Louvre. Many
buildings in France have those black “witches’ caps” on their
towers. Picture 4 shows
the same building seen during a spectacular Paris sunset.) It also should be noted that Paris is extremely clean, in
spite of the fact that there are at least as many tourists here as in
other major European cities. It
is much cleaner than London, Rome or Amsterdam. There is an army of people
employed to keep the streets clean and they do a terrific job of it.
You see them in the mornings picking up, sweeping and opening
valves that turn on streams of water that wash the gutters.
These water spigots are built right into the curbs near corners and
the valves are under a metal plate set into the sidewalk. The water is
allowed to run for about 15 minutes and then shut. This occurs all over
the city. At the end of our first day we took the Metro to the northern suburb of
St. Denis. Last time we were
in Paris, we had decided to drive to St. Denis to see its historic,
interesting and beautiful Cathedral.
Of course, we could not get near it and couldn’t find any place
to park. So this trip, we set
our sights on this beautiful building, whose architecture is partly
Romanesque and party Gothic. (Picture
5 shows the outside of the Cathedral with its Romanesque round windows.) Indeed, we learned from the book we bought that this
Cathedral dates from the mid 1100’s, and was really the first of all the
Gothic Cathedrals that were to follow.
It served as the model for most of those that were built later. When the movers and shakers of other parts of the medieval
world saw it, they decided that they must have one too. Only better. This
time, to be sure that we could actually visit it, we used the subway. The Cathedral was as interesting and beautiful as advertised.
Sure enough, part of it was Romanesque with rounded arch windows,
and part was Gothic with pointed windows.
The rose windows were huge. Indeed
they gave the impression of being the largest we ever have seen, but that
could be because they were lower than those in other Cathedrals that were
built later. (Picture 6 shows
just one of the Rose Windows at St. Denis.)
This Cathedral has the additional distinction of being the last
resting place of a large number of French Kings.
You have to pay to see their tombs up close, but we were never
really fans of royalty so we passed on that privilege. On our second day, we did approximately the same thing, except that we
used our public transportation pass to ride around a lot.
In fact, we took a regular bus whose route lets you see a lot of
Paris. That gave us a
little better idea of what we might want to see. While walking around, we noticed a short line of people
that seemed to move quickly into the Palais de Justice. It turned out to be a security check for people who wanted to
visit Sainte Chapelle Cathedral. We
were there anyway, so we got in line, got through the security check and
walked toward the Cathedral. Then
we made a big mistake. We
decided we’d been through enough Cathedrals and didn’t want to pay the
fee to see this one. How do
we know that this was a mistake? On
our way “home”, we bought an enormous and beautiful book on Gothic art
and architecture – and the extraordinarily beautiful picture on the dust
cover is of Ste. Chapelle’s interior. The
picture shows a multitude of thin, stained glass windows reaching for the
heavens surrounding the interior space.
It must be breathtaking to stand there in the center of the central
nave and do a 360 turn. Next time we are in Paris, we will pay the charge! Our guidebook on Paris told us that there was an interesting
museum that we had missed. So
on the third day we went to the Cluny Museum – which specializes in
medieval art. Its most
precious possession is a series of six tapestries illustrating the five
senses, dating from the 1400’s. (Picture 7 shows one of these tapestries
– the one labeled “Taste”.) These depict a lady and a unicorn, among
other animals, but the Cluny has many wonderful tapestries, paintings, and
other objects. Going through
the museum was a great morning – and in the afternoon we had already
decided on a Parisienne treat. We
planned to have a real Paris meal at lunch time, rather than our usual
sandwich. Since the Cluny
Museum was close to the area where the restaurant is, it was a good day to
try the restaurant. We headed
for the area near the University of Paris – known as The Sorbonne. By the time we reached the restaurant and had our meal, it
was already late enough to call it a day. On Friday, the same guidebook told us that there is a flea
market on the outskirts of Paris in a western suburb called Montreuil.
As anyone who knows us will tell you, Ron is very fond of flea
markets – so we were off. Getting
there by public transit required changing subway lines – which sounds
easy but is not. Actually, it
requires more stairs than we care to count, as well as miles of
passageways between the various subway lines.
As a matter of fact, last time we were in Paris, Adelle cursed the
designers of the Metro system on more than one occasion – and she was
not amused this time either. But
we did get there and we saw every last stall.
In fact we bought a number of things and we both enjoyed the
experience. A quick lunch in
a small oriental restaurant gave us a chance to rest.
Then we found an internet place.
We read our mail and sent out a letter.
That was about all for our day, and we decided to return
“home”. Getting back on the subway however turned out to be a bit
more exciting than we would have liked.
In a very crowded car, someone tried to pick Ron’s pocket.
To be accurate, he did pick his pocket, but Ron felt it and and
threw his arm around the throat of the man nearest him, who probably was
innocent. Ron had seen a hand stick out toward that man and formed the
immediate impression that the chap sticking out his hand was handing off
the wallet. That may or may not have been the case but the sight of Ron
with a strangle-hold on that man must have scared the young man who was
guilty. He immediately backed off, providing a little space. That allowed Ron to spot the wallet on the floor.
Either the young man had missed
the hand-off of the wallet to a confederate or he just threw it away.
Ron released his grip, picked up the wallet, apologized to the man
who he almost had strangled and who was rubbing his neck and shaking his
head, gave the young men a dirty look and made his way farther into the
car. And that was that. So, in this case, a happy ending. The “perps” and the man
who had been nearly strangled got off at the next station. During the course of these days, we had received an e-mail
message from an old friend who was planning to be in Paris and wondered if
we could stay and visit with him. And
that is what we did for the last two days of our stay. We talked, ate huge meals and walked as much as we
could. In addition, we met
the two charming sisters at whose apartment (across the street from Notre
Dame Cathedral) our friend was staying.
Our dinners were especially chosen to be good examples of real
“old” French cuisine. Both
dinners were memorable, but they began and ended late.
Since we were dependent on public transport, getting back to the
campground was problematic. Both
nights that we were all together, our new friends drove us back to the
campground because we had missed the last bus.
This gave them a chance to look at our RV and the campground, and
gave us a chance to drive along the Champs Elysees and around the Arch of
Triumph. We would never have attempted this on our own.
Many avenues enter that circle so it is always packed with a great
deal of traffic. We always feared getting into the circle and not being
able to get out, being forced to keep going round and round until our fuel
ran out. Sadly, we also drove
on the street along the Palais Royal, a huge structure of iron and glass
like the former Crystal Palace in London. But it was too late to visit this very impressive building
which had been closed for many years undergoing repairs. Even if we return next year we won’t be able to visit it
because it is scheduled to be closed again for additional work. Getting out of Paris was an ordeal as usual.
We missed the turn-off for the road we wanted, and drove for a long
time through the suburbs before we finally found the road that led to the
city of Lille. Once we got
onto that road, we were on our way to Belgium. Au revoir, France. Adelle & Ron Adelle and Ron Milavsky, Authors © Adelle and Ron Milavsky, 2005
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