Running Out of Time in Paris

We’ve realized that we are quickly running out of time here, and with a laundry list of things left to do. I’m never as productive with my time as I’d like to think I am. At least we emerged victorious from the last round of shoe shopping for Larry over the weekend. Yea for us! And we got to see a neighborhood that we had not previously been to on this visit, the 11th Arrondissement near the Bastille. It was not the well-manicured, looks-just-so, type of neighborhood that we’re living in. No Kenzo or Armani boutiques, no pricey hotels or restaurants. It had a lot more ethnic restaurants and stores, more graffiti, and felt just a bit more run down. We actually weren’t far from the Pere Lachaise cemetery but we were too tired after all the shoe shopping to trek over there. Oscar Wilde and Chopin will have to wait a bit longer for our visit.

Vélo (bicycle) + liberté (freedom) = Vélib. But not for us.

In the summer of 2007, Paris launched a grand undertaking in the form of Vélib. Vélib is a community automated bike rental system born of a symbiotic relationship between City Hall and JCDecaux, the French advertising company. JCDecaux has a contract with the city of Paris in which it has agreed to administer the Vélib program in exchange for free use of some 1,600 advertising boards around the city, and a share of the bike rental fees that it produces. You cannot walk around Paris without noticing the Vélib stations prominently featured at every Metro station and more – within the borders of Paris there are over 20,000 bikes at nearly 1,500 stations which are situated roughly 300 meters apart, and they are available 24/7. Vélib was an instant hit when it debuted and has only grown in popularity. The Vélib program is now being rolled out to many of the suburbs surrounding Paris. The idea behind the program is to increase convenience and mobility for Parisians, as well as provide a “green” form of transportation. The intent is for users to just take them to get from one spot to the other, or to run quick errands. You can subscribe to a one year pass for 29 Euro, and each time you take a bike the first 1/2 hour is free. I actually don’t know if they make money off of it. The bikes themselves are functionally designed for the program and certainly not the sporty lightweight mountain bikes that Larry and I are used to at home. But they get the job done.

When Larry and I were here in July 2007, we noticed these community bikes parked all around town and decided to take a spin. Except we could not get the automated station to accept our credit card. Any of our cards. We went through the arduous task of selecting the type of plan we wanted (you have a choice of a 1 day or 1 week plan, which are 1 Euro and 5 Euros, respectively), agreeing to the terms and conditions, and inserting our card, only to be told each time that the card was not accepted. We got frustrated and gave up.

Now that we’re back for a longer trip, we decided to give them another chance. After having dinner at our favorite neighborhood brasserie, we went up to the closest Vélib station to check out bikes. And again could not get the computer to accept our credit card. The problem we had, and have had in other places, is that all European credit cards are implanted with a chip which is read by the machine, rather than the magnetic strip that US credit card readers generally rely upon. These stations were obviously designed to read the chip implanted cards, but could not read our plain ol’ magnetic strips. We tried a few different kinds of cards and gave up, vowing to return the next day with even more kinds of credit cards. One of them had to work, eventually. Defeated yet again by the Vélib man behind the curtain.

The next evening we returned with every type of credit card I brought to Europe with me. We were determined to make it work. And finally – the American Express came through for us! Go figure. Happily we chose our bikes and withdrew them from the terminals, and headed off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. Riding these bikes is definitely not the same as my Trek at home – I felt like an unstable newbie who hadn’t been on a bike in 10 years.

We got to the Eiffel Tower quickly and enjoyed our ride down the Champs de Mars promenade and under the tower. Only the line to take the ascenseur (elevator) to the top was long. Very long. We had hoped that by going in the middle of a random weekday we would evade some of the crowds but our hopes were dashed. We are in full tourist season now.

We also couldn’t find a Vélib station to drop the bikes. Despite knowing there were several in the area, and despite running into them without trying on every other outing we’ve taken here, without knowing the exact location we could not seem to catch sight of a single one in the area. So, we decided to press on and take a little bike tour of the city. We crossed the Pont d’Iéna which runs just behind the Eiffel Tower, and rode up toward the Trocadéro area on the paths surrounding the Palais de Chaillot, where I happily collapsed on the grass and Larry took advantage of my exhaustion by snapping a picture.

We were able to spend some time tooling around the rive droite before heading back across to the rive gauche and visiting Lady Liberty’s little sister. They are looking at each other across the Atlantic.