Giverny now Paris!

Today is the day for putting Sir Gulliver on the SNCF train from Vernon to Paris. I wasn't gonna let some damn storm that shut down the Paris airport for a bit, according to the Télé news stop me from seeing a bunch of waterlilies and a green Japanese bridge. So I went back to Vernon, stayed in the youth hostel, and rode out and back to Giverny. Well, it really must be quite lovely after hours, but during the day it is totally mobbed. I've not seen such a long queue for tickets for some time. Another blisteringly hot day, but this one shared with large groups of noisy American college students getting their art fix, and lots of Japanese tourists desperate to hit the gift shop (admittedly the best I've seen, in Monet's atelier no less!) I had to ride Sir Gulliver out to Giverny as it was 2pm and the hostel didn't open til 6, so I noticed a distinct drop off in bitchin' and moanin' about how hot it was and how tired they were from the college kids as I rolled by. Yes, kids, you think it's hot, then get a load of this.

Giverny is too popular for its own good. But, by spending time in Les Andelys, on the banks of the Seine, I think I experienced the light and atmospheric conditions so so beloved of the Impressionists.

Anyway, for 12 euros, I got the train. Would have been great if the SNCF had decided to unlock the bike hangar part of the train, so I spent the entire hour holding Gulliver on his back wheel and watching the buildings get grimier and the graffiti more pronounced. Got off at Gare St Lazare, which is pretty skuzzy, and of course full of flights of stairs and no access to an elevator. Luckily a guy smoking a pipe helped me haul Gulliver down the steps. For a country that I know absolutely loves its vélos, why the train/bike transportation link is still such a work in progress is anyone's guess.

Anyway, Gulliver is now locked to a bike rack in the car park under the YHA hostel in St Germain des Pres, and I have a week of riding the metro and walking to look forward to. Paris is very walkable, I'd forgotten just how much so, but I walked Gulliver from St Nazare to the hostel, and it allowed me to walk up some of the boulevards of Paris, and start seeing the city at last.

I've found an Internet shop run by some local French Arabs (a tip from the Venuzeulan guy running the desk at the hostel) so able to blog a little. Internet cafés and pay internet has been zero to none in the parts of Normandy I've been riding through.

I just had to content myself with Norman castles and Monet. Ain't so bad, really.