Paris - Walk to the Marais
The Sapling and I opted to walk after our long plane ride, dragging our bags, all the way from the Arc de Triomphe to our apartment near the St. Paul's station in the Marais. Yes, we knew that we could have hopped on Line 1 and gotten there in quite a bit less time, but, we weren't supposed to arrive before 9:30am and we had plenty of time to kill. Besides, it was an utterly gorgeous morning.
As we walked down the Champs Elysee, our main companions were joggers and the sidewalk/street cleaners. The walks were getting brushed and washed. A few of the store ownere were starting to straighten up for the coming day. The air was quite stunningly clear -- most of the days we were in Paris suffered from a fair amount of air pollution that reduced views considerably. We (or maybe just I) were amused to see a plaque for Alberto Santos-Dumont, the namesake of a local coffee house back in southern New Hampshire. Santos-Dumont was a Brazilian and an early aviation pioneer. He studied in Paris and developed various lighter than air vehicles that circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower.
We progressed past the store fronts, including the ubiquitous McDonalds, and continued through a park to the Place de la Concorde. We swung left and then headed down the Rue de Rivoli, a straight shot to the Marais. In the Marais, the Rue de Rivoli is one of the oldest streets in Paris, dating back to Roman times, and is not a product of Baron Haussmann's reengineering of Paris in the 1800's. However, first it runs past major sites and products of later times such as the Jardin des Tuileries and the Louvre. Then, the street becomes very commercial with stores, cafes, restaurants and various other shops.
At long last we arrived at the St. Paul's station, and headed for our apartment on Rue de l'Ormesson and across from the place du Marche Sainte-Catherine. We discovered that the apartment was seriously fortified, with a strong door and lock on the street, plus a substantial lock on the apartment. We struggled for sometime to figure out the key and lock on the apartment, which was unlike any U.S. key we had ever seen!
