Our time in gay Paree

Well people I thought that I should bring you up to date with our travels since my last posting back in November.

Our drive up from Mareuil was without incident except that we got a little lost driving through Fontainbleu but still managed to get to Orly Airport to drop off the car to Peugoet.

As usual our dear friends Roger & Christiane were there to meet us, we had travelled 9200kms in the 3 months & had seen some amazing countryside & the car had performed superbly over the entire period returning amazing economy of 19.4kms/litre.

We just relaxed over the next couple of days taking in the ultra mild French autumn with beautiful blue skies, it was a real treat to just walk around taking in all the magnificent sights of this spectacular city. We did receive some disturbing news from Alana that our dear friend Dottie had had a stroke during the week & was currently in the Alfred Hospital, we just hope that she makes a full recovery very soon.

We also caught up with Tim Lyons ( Hazel & Tony's nephew ) & had a nice meal at a local Italian restaurant just near our apartment.We also had the opportunity to go to Champagne with R & C to visit a small producer called Lete-Vautrain, great quality but only produces 75000 bottles per year so only for local consumption.

We decided to buy a weekly ticket for the train & bus as it works out to be very cheap & would recommend that anyone coming to visit Paris for an extended stay purchase one. This new freedom allowed us to discover places like the Jardin du Plante which houses the Musee Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle Grande Galerie de l'Evolution, what a mouthful but a wonderful display of animals & skeletons from all around the world.

From there it was to the Catacombes ( see pic ) a very interesting but macarbe assembly of skulls & bones from various cemeteries around Paris placed there after mining ceased in an underground mine back in the early 1800's to make way for land that was needed for an expanding Paris, quite incredible. The view from the Arc de Triomph is superb as it takes in the whole 360 degrees spectrum with each avenue splaying out like 12 spokes of a bicycle wheel, a magic sight to behold. The Champs Elysee ( thats us with Arc de Triomph in the background ) itself is a beautiful boulevard it's easy to see why millions of tourists pass down this street each year.

Another way of seeing another side of Paris is to take a ride on the Bateaux Mouche or river boat that passes by a lot of the great buildings & landmarks that line the Seine, from there we took the bus to Isle de Cite which is where the original city of Paris first started back in the 7th or 8th century but was then known as Lutece.If you want to go back much further in their history you can trace their beginnings to the Gallo-Roman times when the tribe called Parisii were here in 52BC, so you can see they have a long tradition to call on

In this same area is the Place de Vosges where the royals held court for many years, one of the most famous people to live in this very upper class sector was the famous writer Victor Hugo who lived here from 1826 to 1851 before he was exiled to Guernsey for his views against the then Emperor Napoleon 3. He returned to France when Napoleon was ousted in 1870.

One of the most interesting things we have done in Paris was to visit " les Egouts " or the underground sewers that service this vast metropolis.Until the middle ages, the drinking water in Paris was taken from the Seine, wastewater was poured on to fields or unpaved streets,& finally filtered back into the Seine.

Around 1200, Philippe Auguste had the Parisian streets paved, incorporating a drain for waste water in their middle. In 1370, Hugues Aubriot, a Parisian provost, had a vaulted, stone-walled sewer built in the " rue Montmarte ". This sewer collected the waste water & took it to the
" Menilmontant " brook, however the wastewater was still drained in the open air.

Under the reign of Louis 14th, a large ring sewer was built on the right bank & the Bievre river was used as a sewer for the left bank of the Seine. Under Napoleon 1st, the first Parisian vaulted sewer network was built ( 30km long ).

It was only in 1850 that baron Haussmann, the prefect for the Seine & the engineer Eugene Belgrand designed the present Parisian sewer & water supply networks. Thus was built more than a century ago a double water supply network ( one for drinking water & one for non drinking water ) & a sewer network the length of which was 600km in 1878.

Belgrand's successors went on extending the Parisian network from 1914 to 1977 with more than 1000km of new sewers being built. No other city in the world has a sewer network like the one found in Paris, it now has 2100km of tunnels. Every day 1.2 million cubic metres of waste water have to be collected. Every year 15000 cubic metres of solid waste are taken out & disposed of.

A general sewerage treatment programme designed to meet the needs for 50 years was drawn up & became state-approved in 1935, this was the beginning of industrial sewerage treatment.
Since then the Acheres plant has gone on growing, at the end of 1970 it was one of the biggest sewerage treatment plants in Europe with a capacity of more than 2 million cubic metres/day.

I know that was a longed winded explanation of a subject that is normally not referred to but I thought that it was such an interesting visit that you all should know about it.

We also took a day trip down to Chateau Fontainbleu & this turned out to be the most opulent of all the Chateaux ( see the 2 pics ) that we have visited during our time here, it would be too difficult to describe just how ornate the furniture, jewellery, paintings, tapestries are plus the magnificent gardens only surpassed by the gardens at Versailles. This was the Chateau that Napoleon signed his abdication & bid a final farewell to his generals before he entered exile on the island of Elba.
My next posting will be from our time in the U.K.