"If you are in alone on a street in Paris, France, and you become unconscious, as long as someone calls the number on the bracelet, we can tell them who you are.”
On the Seine - Paris - France
French class for me was an awkwardly positioned one hour a week venture that only lasted for six months of the year during year 8, that would have made in back in the good 'ole year of 1989 if memory serves me correctly. I remember not liking U2 back then as their song Desire was being played on the TV and radio endlessly, I remember still thinking that a Hits Compilation album was the best thing you could ever buy because obviously you got all the hits in the one convenient package, there was also the small matter of the Berlin Wall coming down and some racy catchwords like glasnost and perestroika filling the the air with some type of pervasive enthusiasm and wonder. So, what's my point here? French class, that's right, that's what I was getting to. It was a short weekly escapade into the wonders of the SNCF, a complex Parisian city map and the few lines of French that somehow always stuck with me. There was a huge poster of the Eiffel Tower on the wall and for some reason I always remember the background of the image being a very dark blue, perhaps it was just that the picture had a dark blue feel, perhaps, never the less, those memories were somehow always special and the need to visit Paris and to check out a place that I'd always had a soft spot for without ever having been there was kind of overwhelming. So it was, on the 5th of July, I jumped a plane from Madrid and made my way into the town of my dreams.
My first steps on French soil occurred when I disembarked at Paris-Orly airport, looking out from the ceiling high glass windows I was kind of amazed that I had actually arrived and that it had taken me this many years to finally get here. Looking into the city I could see that famous structure protruding out of the Parisian skyline, it was a mere14kms away and I must have had the cheesiest smile on my face of all the disembarking passengers, but that's OK, it's something that I was more than happy to live with.
So understanding the the rail system and the fabled metro is one of the most efficient and practical ways to get around Paris, (please see Yr 8 French class reference for reasoning), I jumped the Orlyval automatic metro service and made my subterraneally to Antony (Paris RER) station. OK, there were a few moments of confusion when I tried to get into the actual station at Antony because my ticket was giving me a big rejection signal but hey, I hadn't come all this way to be denied by some militant train ticket facility. I threw my bags over, jumped the barrier and away I went. So I took the RER B line to Gare du Nord, cheesy grin in tow and considered jumping a subway line to another station where I was suppose to pick up the keys for the apartment that I was renting somewhere in the 5th arrondissement for the next five days, but eh, I wasn't the exact route that I ended up taking. In my haste to get to my destination I simply jumped in a cab and made my way down to the office at 62 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. How cool was this! I was in a taxi cruising the streets just trying to absorb as much as possible and I've got to say, from the moment I arrived I just fell in love with the place. A slightly biased call, obviously, but at least I wasn't disappointed, not by any stretch of the imagination. Once I picked up my keys I decided that walking might be the way for me to do it, why the hell not? My sense of direction is reasonably good, knowing that the apartment was more than a simple walk away I decided to try my luck and see where the hell it was that I'd end up. Along with that cheesy grin I was rolling my suitcase down these Parisian streets and if I didn't look like a foreign head case previously, well, I sure knew that I looked like one now. About 15-20 mins later and following my own internal GPS coordinates I came across Les Halles, a place in the 1st arrondissement, named for the large wholesale marketplace that use to take pride of place in the area. I have to thank Mr Anthony Bourdain for the background on that one, at least I knew that I was travelling in the right direction and as the sun set and the lights came on around me, walking the streets of this beautiful city was the best and only place I could think of being at that moment.
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