The Paris Metro

Editor's note- I am absurdly too lazy to put in the proper accents and other pronunciation symbols on the names of places. I apologize for my sloth. 


The Paris Metro is a thing of beauty, according to a friend of mine. I have seen many, many metro systems over the course of my travels around Europe and they're called a variety of things- the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn, the underground, the metro, the tubes. Quite honestly, the metro is the easiest way to get around Paris and you can see quite a bit of the city from just watching the people get on and off at different stops, tourists and families here, business men and women in suits there, a group of teenagers at this stop, slow little French men at that. I spent a lot of time on the Paris metro in all its grimy glory and so I present to you, as a representative sample of my time in Paris, my last day on the metro, as told through the tickets I had left to use.

Ticket 1: Crimee to Pigalle
I'd actually walked along this metro track before, heading over to the Crimee station by my hostel before deciding that I'd walk to Montmartre one fine morning. I passed Riquet and Stalingard, before that moment just words on a map to me before making my way around the charming part of town that hosts both Sacre Coeur, a huge church on a huge hill, the Moulin Rouge, a dance hall in the red light district of Paris. But this morning I was not up for the same long walk, especially not to visit a place I'd already been (I forgot my camera card and so had to go back and snap new pictures, you know, to prove I'd been there). So I took the 7 line to Stalingard and changed to the 2, getting off again at Pigalle.

I walked up the hill to the base of La Butte, looking once again at Sacre Coeur.

It's a beautiful place. I climbed the stairs, scaring the various sellers and scammers out of my way with a look and a firm Non! Children ran around and played on the steps and carousel, bringing their laughter up to a volume that rivaled the speaker of the harp player at a plaza on the top of the hill. I looked out again at the beautiful view of the city and then walked down the steps on the side, making my way down cobbled streets to the road that I knew would lead me to the Moulin Rouge, stopping on the way to buy postcards and a souvenir. Because I'm good like that.

At the Moulin Rouge I geeked out again, took a picture, hummed a few bars of whichever song on that soundtrack I had memorized popped into my head at that time and then walked over to the metro stop, called Blanche for the square it was in, marking what I would call irony in the naming of a square White when it contained the Moulin Rouge.

Holy Hannah, it's like a yeti sighting! I'm never on my blog!

Ticket 2: Blanche to Pere Lachaise
I had been wanting to visit this huge cemetery in Paris for a while and was glad it was conveniently on the same line as the train I had just stepped on. We had played a song that had a movement named for it in Symphony Band back when we still met in Hill 107, so it must have been freshman year and ever since then I've wanted to see the city of graves that inspired it. Pere Lachaise is named for the confessor of a french king, Father Lachaise, who used to own the land that this place is built on. There are many famous people there. You can vitrually visit the cemetery here. I only got see the graves of a few famous people before getting tired (and quite honestly a bit creeped out by the trees that seemed to be kept in a perpetual fall and the cold wind that flew through the cemetary, perfect for Halloween but chilling for July) and calling it an afternoon, though this was quite a good beginning for the Accidental Visiting of Famous Dead Scientists that I stumbled into over the next few weeks.

Ticket 3: Pere Lachaise to Saint-Germain-des-Pres
The next time I got on the metro I wasn't really sure where I was going. I decided that the best choice would be to join up the with 1 line at Nation, which I did and, upon consulting my map, picked out the stop for Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the oldest church in Paris. I changed from the 1 line at Nation to the 4 line at Chaelet and got off a few stops later at Saint-Germain-des-Pres.

It's quite a nice little church, actually, in a quaint section of Paris. I sat there for a while and then walked over to Saint-Sulpice, which was featured inTthe Da Vinci Code, a fact of which I was reminded when a few teenage boys slunk up to the altar rail and started to point at the gold line on ground. It's a big, impressive church despite its sullying through Dan Brown's narrative, but I rather enjoyed the few minutes I spent outside of the church listening to the guitar player busking on the steps more than the forty-five minutes I spent inside craning my neck yet again to look at ceilings too far away and saints too close by.

As I left the church it started to drizzle and as hazardous as rain is to my health (I don't think I mentioned this before, but I spent most of my time in Paris in a knee brace because I fell in the rain in Lyon with my pack on, falling with its entire weight on mine on my poor right knee), it drove me back to the metro for a distance I would have normally walked.

Ticket 4: Saint-Sulpice to Cite
Notre Dame is not far from a stop on the 4 line. I normally took the metro to Pont Neuf to go there because it involved no changes from the line that ran closest to my hostel, but the Cite stop actually lets you off on the Isle de la Cite, the heart of Paris where centuries ago a tribe of wanderers settled and started this city of cities. You can read all about it in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I was back here again for the last time, wanting to spend the last euros I had to spend before switching to pounds on a candle from Notre Dame. As far as souvenirs go, the candle isn't typical (and if anyone's climbing the tower at Notre Dame in the future, I want a tiny version of the gargoyle with his tongue sticking out because he's my favorite) but it's what I wanted and so I went again.

It was surprisingly less crowded than anticipated- I thought back to my second visit when I had been shoved back towards the doors flanked by Joan of Arc on the right and a church father on the left while I was trying to get closer to the altar. This time, though, there were fewer people around to listen to the clink of my euros as each coin hit the metal bed waiting for them, five coins dropping penitently into bin before I picked out my candle and put it in my oversized jacket pocket.

I sat in the back of Notre Dame for a while, unwilling to say goodbye to the building. I smiled to myself as a voice came over the sound system, first quietly sushing us and then reminding us, once again, that we are in a church and that in a church, one prays. Quietly. And I thought and thought about people needing to be reminded, in this place of all the places that I've seen, that they are in a church.

Ticket 5: Pont Neuf to Ecole Militaire
The metro stop Pont Neuf is a little farther from Notre Dame than I thought. I also dallied for a while on the Pont Notre Dame, trying to figure out how to fit my tiny extra lock on the big stone curls of the bridge before I found another like mine and imitated their method. It was a sight and I wish I would have taken pictures of the other locks, big, small, carved, blank that encircled the metalwork of the bridge. This plus a busy metro means that I was a little late meeting Christine at the Champs de Mars to take Eiffel Tower pictures, having changed from the 7 line to the 8 at the Opera stop, a change I had made several times before.

Like taking pictures at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it's impossible to get a good shot on the first try at the Eiffel Tower. This includes regularly posed pictures in addition to the obligatory jumping pictures. Add to that the fact that I'm wearing a Northface at least a size too big and the fact that my jeans have been perpetually rolled up since I left the hostel this morning as I hate wet jeans in the rain more than looking like an idiot with rolled up jeans and the fact that my belt disappeared early into the Paris trip and I was wearing a red pashmina as a belt and I'm amazed I took a picture that I like at all.

Twice in one post! I might actually be blinking, but honestly, when I look at this picture, I'm more concerned for the person with the umbrella- the ground was pretty gross.

We walked up to the tower one more time and Christine got a hot dog and we talked over Paris and waved salesmen away again and again. We were both excited for London but Paris, Paris had been wonderful. After a leisurely walk down the Champs de Mars, for what must be the last time of last times in Paris, we hopped on the metro and headed back to our hostel.

Ticket 6: Ecole Militare to Crimee
I threw the metro ticket Christine had given me to pay me back for an early loaning of tickets into the trash with a flourish, thinking if I ever had to buy another metro ticket it would be too soon. I had one saved back in the room for the trip to the train station the next day, but as life stood now, I was done with my travels around the city.

So, in a way, going around Paris is a bit like the travel on this trip has been. Some stops are well planned, others more spur of the moment. Some are new while some are places I've seen before. Some are quite focused on the things that I'm meant to be focusing on and others are a little more distracted, picking up on the good things about the places I'm visiting. But in general, all of the stops remind me that I've done a lot of traveling from place to place, spending more time on trains than I think I've ever spent or will ever spend.

We walked back to the hostel quickly as always and sat in the room for a while, talking with an Australian who had spent two years in London and a girl from the lake country who was on her first stop in her European travels. I packed slowly, making sure that I wasn't missing anything, arranging my back as neatly as possible. The day we left for London marked two months away from home. The same clothes had been packed into the same bag time after time.

I can't convince myself that I'm ready to stop packing those clothes back into this bag, or that I'm ready to do it another time. You know, it's only 1.70 euro for a ticket. Maybe I'll ride the metro again.