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Paris à pied (page 2)
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As Ann and I slip onto Claire’s narrow, flower-filled balcony that night, we think
it is the national holiday that makes the air ring with laughter, guitars and the occasional
pop of a cork. And, indeed, July 14 is the only time we see fireworks light up the sky above
Sacré-Coeur. But every day at dusk, young and not so young people gather along the
canal with picnic baskets and bottles of wine, disturbing the peace of its resident ducks
as evening stretches far into night.
An idyllic spot? Not altogether. Each morning, we notice a couple of people sleeping rough
on an aging mattress tucked under the canal’s footbridge. A few hundred metres to the
north, an entire village of tents signifies that hundreds of luckless people are now making
their home along the banks of the canal. Makeshift clotheslines hang between the tents. At
night, low fires burn. Paris has tried to banish the homeless from the city’s core,
but some of the homeless have other ideas.
WHEN IN PARIS …
Getting there Air France and Air Canada fly to Paris from several Canadian cities, as do less expensive
airlines, such as Air Transat, Zoom Airlines and Corsair. If you’re already on the
other side of the Atlantic, the Eurostar train between London and Paris takes as little as
2 hours and 15 minutes.
Staying there
The Canal Saint-Martin area has many restaurants and bars but fewer hotels than some Paris
neighbourhoods. Two worth considering are Hôtel
Libertel Canal Saint-Martin and Hôtel
Garden Saint-Martin. Several other hotels in the 10th arrondissement are closer
to its two railway stations.
Playing there
To avoid the worst of the crowds, explore some of the smaller museums, such as Musée Carnavalet and Musée Marmottan Monet (with its spectacular Monets). Many restaurants and bars can be found on
both sides of Canal Saint-Martin. One of the most picturesque is Hôtel du Nord, the main setting of Marcel Carné’s 1938 movie Hôtel du Nord.
It now functions only as a restaurant, with tables beside the canal. The high-speed train network
puts many other beautiful French cities within reach of a day trip: Reims, for example, has
the magnificent cathedral where the kings of France were crowned.
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This is a neighbourhood familiar with strife. Between the 13th and late 18th centuries,
public hangings took place a stone’s throw away. After the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
in 1572, the body of a Huguenot leader, Gaspard de Coligny, was left on public display — a
gruesome warning of the price of religious dissent. Thirty-five years later, King Henri IV
established a plague hospital here, a safe distance from court and cathedral. Ann and I are
staying near where thousands of Parisians, one way or another, had suffered agonizing deaths.
You wouldn’t know it from the tranquility of Hôpital Saint-Louis now. Still
functioning as a hospital specializing in dermatology, it contains an inner quadrangle built
of brick, slate and stone, that rivals the much better-known Place des Vosges in its graceful
symmetry. We relax there one hot afternoon with only two French families and a few strutting
songbirds for company.
It’s possible, you see, to have a wonderful time in Paris at the height of the tourist
season. The trick is to avoid the other tourists. I say this not out of any spirit of snobbery — everyone
has an equal right to enjoy the city. But the only time we venture onto Île de la Cité,
the throng of visitors is so overwhelming that I don’t even attempt to shove into Notre
Dame. There’s no point trying to see a great building or a magnificent work of art
when you can’t contemplate it at your own pace. Far better, in summer, to avoid the
three-star attractions and to linger in out-of-the-way haunts like Hôpital Saint-Louis.
Even Père Lachaise Cemetery is uncomfortably busy, though it’s large enough
for any visitor to get happily lost. And besides, the crowds gather only around the graves
of the famous: Jim Morrison, Frédéric Chopin, Oscar Wilde. Deceased politicians
and bureaucrats are ignored; it’s the artists, who often suffer misery and penury in
life, who triumph in death. “Marie! Marie!” a woman sobs at the tomb of French
actress Marie Trintignant, who mothered four sons by four different men before she was beaten
to death by her final lover in 2002. “The curve of your lips changed the world,” one
admirer has scrawled in red on the monument to Oscar Wilde.
The long walk from Père Lachaise back to Canal Saint-Martin takes us through several
neighbourhoods — one block contains three Arabic bookstores, another has three Turkish
restaurants. Paris is perpetually changing. As its days of riot showed in 2006, social change
is often difficult. Yet standing on the balcony of what had quickly come to feel like home,
I feel optimistic about the great city’s future. A park across the canal is constantly
packed with young families, young lovers, young men talking or playing soccer — not
to mention middle-aged Chinese men and women doing Tai Chi and older people smelling the
roses. The park is a vibrant haven.
And now I understand why the French rarely suffer from obesity. After a week spent climbing
the canal’s footbridge, climbing the Métro’s endless staircases, climbing
the hills of Père Lachaise and the back side of Montmartre, the 115 steps up to the
apartment offers little challenge. I approach them with a Gallic shrug, knowing that a couple
of minutes’ exercise will give me the best view in town.
Mark Abley is a writer based in Montréal. He described the south of France in
his book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.
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