I decided a while ago that if we both stayed healthy through the winter I would love to go to Paris to celebrate my birthday. After last year’s events and the hideous memory of confinement due to COVID I have been left feeling that if there’s something I want to do, best get on with it sooner rather later.

So onto booking.com to see how expensive it might turn out to be. Cheaper to do in the spring and better now than this particular summer when the Olympics take place in Paris. Our eldest son, the cyclist, often pops across the channel on his cycle rides and has been known to go to gigs in Paris…’not a lot dearer than a gig in London, mother, when I might have to book a hotel too’. One place he had enjoyed was the area around the Saint Martin canal and, as I had decided this would be a train trip, a central hotel with parking, usually scarcer than hen’s teeth, wasn’t a necessity.

I found what looked and sounded like a reasonable one right on the quai of the canal and booked us in for three nights. The cyclist checked it out last month on his return from spending time with us and reported it looked ok and was just along from a hotel celebrated in a cult film. The excitement began!

It’s now Friday and we leave on Sunday from our local station. Friends are dropping us off but are prepared for the late or non arrival of our scheduled train, (it happened to the cyclist on his last two visits), and will whizz us off to Brive for our Paris bound connection if need be. Now I just have to squeeze everything into my smaller and more manageable suitcase plus handbag, hard to do when you are used to chucking odds and ends into the car ‘just in case’.

We were up and organised well before our friends arrived so there was a bit of a wait at the apparently deserted train station at Biars, our departure point. Both of our phone apps were saying the train was on time and it was.

And it was surprisingly full. We often see the trains pass the end of the garden with only one or two passengers on board but this was busy with only one set of double seats free. The familiar landscape slip by and we arrived in Brive with plenty of time for our Paris connection despite Mr McGregor heading off down the stairs convinced we were on the wrong platform. I waited patiently for his return having read the sign above our heads!

I was not best pleased to find we were in a coach with a corridor and even less so to be stuck with an old fashioned compartment where our seats were facing one another by the door. I wrestled our cases onto the racks above and soon discovered there was no WiFi or charging sockets anywhere. The cyclist praises our French trains, clearly we were on some elderly rolling stock he’d missed!

The Trainline app told us the train was sold out and our compartment was busy with several passengers arriving, leaving and being replaced as we progressed towards Paris. A taxi from Austerlitz (the bus might be too big a challenge for Mr McGregor armed with a suitcase and a stick) took us into the thick of the evening traffic jam and eventually to the door of our hotel, after some muttering about not being allowed to park.

We were welcomed in by a charming young chap and told we were on the third floor. Good, I hadn’t asked for a disabled room but hoped we wouldn’t be up with the pigeons in the roof. The hotel had a tiny footprint but our room had everything we needed plus a lovely view of the canal and its lock.

With the houses lining the quays and the many bicycles whipping past in all directions I was reminded of Amsterdam. Hopefully it wouldn’t be as cold as my birthday we spent there!

The cyclist had recommended a nearby creperie which I quickly booked on arrival as it was only open on the Sunday evening of our trip. Full of excitable young people mostly speaking English we felt our combined ages! Nevertheless we enjoyed our meal and then took a wander along the canal.

It was not too cold and the canal and its lock looked impossibly romantic under the lights.

We passed the Hotel du Nord which we were soon to discover has almost mythic status for the French. A film based on a novel made in the thirties starred, amongst others, a popular actress called Arletty. She had a line in the film that she delivered in a perfect Parisian accent of the working class and it is this that les Francais can quote back to you if you mention the hotel (I know, I tried it on a friend!). Over the next few days I discovered more about the film but for now I just took a photo for the cyclist and continued our stroll.

Once more, we were probably the oldest people wandering its banks. 😊 But how satisfying that we still could albiet slowly and stick assisted for one of us.

There was blue sky when I woke up on the birthday morning. Himself made me a cup of tea and I spent a happy moment opening all the cards I had been saving for the day. An inveterate card sender myself I am always chuffed to receive one, especially when the sender has clearly thought about things I might appreciate; cats, flowers, particularly poppies, rude jokes about my age and an enchanting Eric Ravilious reproduction.

Breakfast was taken in the bar on the ground floor. A simple continental (!) but enhanced by freshly squeezed orange juice. We dawdled through our tartine watching the near misses beyond the window, made more dramatic by two interior mirrors which gave the impression head on crashes were imminent!

I had bought day tickets for the centre Pompidou which opened at 11am, also the time I had chosen. Mr McGregor reckoned he could manage the roughly half hour walk so after a consultation of the photocopied map in my pocket we set off. We looked at restaurant menus as we went thinking of the birthday evening meal.

Our route took us around ‘Place de la Republique’ a long rectangular open space with an enormous bronze statue of Marianne and the three further stone ones around her representing the three tenets of the French constitution ‘liberte, egalite and fraternite’ at its centre. Apparently the pedestrian area was created around 2008 to give walkers precedence over the thundering traffic.

We struck off down the rue de Temple, one of the oldest streets in Paris which commemorates the area settled by the Knights Templar in the 12th century. A Templars tower, later used as a prison at the time of the revolution and housing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette before they met their sorry end, stood near today’s metro station but was demolished by Napoleon to prevent its continuing as a royalist place of pilgrimage. About now Mr McGregor started his ‘are you sure we’re going the right way’ questioning. Over the years I’ve realised he can’t follow a map and has a very poor sense of direction so I just keep on keeping on, telling him to trust me. Hard for him, I know! 😊

As we walked I grabbed photos of things I could look up later. One place in particular was 79, rue de Temple with two information boards each side of its huge doors. Later research threw up many things about this auspicious address, one interesting fact being the existence of one Elizabeth Dmitrieff, a communard who launched the ‘Union des femmes pour le defense de Paris et les soins aux blesses’. I discovered she had a tiny square named after her established in 2007 by the socialist mayor of Paris at the time. By coincidence, I unwittingly took an arty photo of the metro station in the middle of it on our way back to the hotel!

Finally we hung a right and came out alongside the centre Pompidou with its tube and pipe covered exterior. I was reminded of our elderly neighbour when we first got to know our village neighbours in the 90s who told me she grew up in the area around Les Halles in Paris and was sad when it was demolished to make way for the Pompidou. The market moved to Rungis in much the same way the market traders of Covent garden were moved out of central London. Fortunately, Covent garden was only modified not demolished.

A short wait outside and then we were inside grappling with the technology of the automatic locker system for stowing our coats and scarves, yet another password to remember. I scribbled ours down! Our warm coats were chosen as the result of gloomy forecasts which seem to have been mistaken as we had enjoyed spring sunshine thus far. I felt the need for coffee after our trek so we headed upstairs to the cafe and planned our day.

The last and only time we had visited the Pompidou was for a retrospective of Henri Cartier Bresson which was fabulous but very extensive. By the time we had finished we were shattered and too tired to take in any of the other collections. This time I was keen to see the permanent modern art collection but also the temporary photography exhibition called Corps a Corps (body to body), which was a mix of works held by the centre plus loans from a collector, Matin Karmitz. In kindness to himself I decided photos first then he could hole up in a comfy corner if he didn’t fancy the art!

To reach the exhibition on the top floor we took the exterior escalators which treat you to an amazing panorama of the Paris skyline. We ticked off the tour Eiffel and Sacre Coeur as we gently ascended.

The photographs were fascinating, a collection of images dedicated to the human condition. We went our separate ways as per, absorbing information, in my case that means surreptitious photos of my own and scribbling names on my programme.

All the photos were in black and white, Mr McGregor’s preferred medium, so it was a very happy couple who finally spilled out into the filtered sunshine of the escalator tunnels. We dallied by the menu of the top floor restaurant but decided the cafe had lighter offerings so descended to the first floor noting several school groups beginning to throng the escalators.

It was interesting to note that the cafe had mostly vegetarian options. Something that still surprises in France but we were in the cosmopolitan capital, after all. To watch my husband eating a vegetarian ‘hotdog’ accompanied by a non alcohol beer was a first.

Then I had the best afternoon in a long while. We had plumped for the fifth floor part of the permanent exhibition which holds the 20th and early 21st century works. The fourth floor with its more experimental works would be there if we had the energy for them afterwards….

I revelled in rooms full of Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee, Delaunay, Kahlo, Matisse, Mondrian….I photographed a Chagall that had images of Paris as befitting the day. I had spent last year’s birthday in a tiny chapel in the Correze visited specifically to see the stained glass windows he had designed for it.

In a side aisle I came across art works reclaimed from the Nazi thieves which hadn’t found their original owners. A Utrillo of Montmartre reminded me of a battered reproduction that had hung in our home for years, a gift from my aunt when she moved countries.

It was with a wrench that I tore myself away, the ‘I’m the chauffeur no more’ had gone off to find a comfy seat a while before. With a last nod to Bacon and Warhol and the Moores beyond the window grills in a courtyard, I rejoined him with a big grin on my face.

I told him he’d missed the most fun thing in the last room, an extravagant array of brightly coloured foam shapes that I wanted to hurl myself into….but didn’t. 😊

We visited the gift shop, as you do, where I just bought a magnet of one of the black and white photos and a foldup bag for life printed with Chagall. Our lives are full of stuff already although I did ask in the bookshop about a Robert Doisneau book we’d seen in the hotel that paired his photos with poems by Prevert, but sadly out of print, I was told.

Recovering our coats etc from the red lit locker, they go green when free again, we set off to look for a different walk ‘home’. But just before we left Pompidou I dragged Lou over to the photo booth for a silly memento of the day. Each copy came with an art work so it had to be Chagall, bien sur!

Crossing the huge place in front of the centre we headed for the far corner and turned towards rue de Turbigo.

Before going far though we stopped for a tisane and a beer on a sunny terrace.

Then back to the amble home with the inevitable ‘are you sure this is the right way? We eventually came in sight of Marianne resplendent in the late afternoon sun which only slightly mollified himself.

But then we walked past a clutch of fast food joints with a Macdo which he remembered from earlier. Not that enormous Marianne? Hey ho.

From there it was just a few minutes to the bank of the canal, the quai Valmy, where the sight of four older people glued to their phones made me smile. So not just the young then?

For the birthday meal we decided that a nearby restaurant advertising itself as specialising in Basque cuisine from Bairritz sounded interesting. We’d peeked through its windows the evening before on our canal side amble. I used the online reservation service called le Fork which had been successful before and was again.

We had a good meal in comfy surroundings knowing we didn’t have far to walk home afterwards. 😊

The next morning was sunny again and we had another 11 o’clock appointment. This was for the Sainte Chapelle which I wanted to visit during a previous stay in Paris but it was closed. I’d read it had the most beautiful stained glass in France so was eager to see it for myself.

I’d taken a cheeky selfie of us in the lift and was feeling good about the day ahead. We had decided that the bus would be the better option today as it was further to go and yesterday we had been on our feet a lot.

Google maps directed us back to Place de la Republique where after a few minutes wait our bus took us towards Notre Dame where I thought it would drop us but instead it was just over the river. We walked back and found ourselves in front of an impressive building with no obvious way around it to the Chapelle. Later I discovered it was the prefecture de Paris housed in the Citerne Cite. I ventured to ask two heavily armed young women at the entrance for directions. ‘Gauche, gauche, droit’ they replied. so left, left, right we walked and then found ourselves up against barriers on both side of the road. This time it was a uniformed and armed chap I asked who smiled, complimented me on my Fremch and directed us to the top of the street where there was a crossing opposite the tour de l’Horloge.

It’s a sad comment on our times that so much security surrounds landmarks. But the Sainte Chapelle is within the Palais de Justice and when buying the tickets it had said arrive early because of passing through the necessary security. However, that was, literally, a waste of time. We were kept penned in behind specific but confused lines until the hour struck when a harassed official came out and let us proceed. Oddly, Lou was allowed to carry his stick through the full body scan, arms held aloft while our coats and bags went separately.

We followed signs that led us past the entrance booth and through double doors. My first impression was one of immense disappointment. We found ourselves in a low vaulted chapel full of audio guide and book stalls with some glass windows on the surrounding walls. Is this it? I whispered. Then we saw, right in the corner by the entrance a small sign with ‘sens de visite’. It led to a narrow winding stone staircase (oh cripes). I got himself to lead, so you fall on something soft, I told him!

And then we emerged into the Chapelle proper. Still smaller than I had imagined and almost completely built of glass it seemed.

Because it was a sunny day the glass in certain windows really glowed. Around us photos were being taken while others stood listening to their audio guides. I just tried to absorb the experience, knowing I would buy a guide book as we left, to be studied quietly later.

Of course, I took photos too but they can only give you a reminder of something so splendid. The floor was interesting too but no one seemed to photograph that, only the mad English woman. 😊 The whole edifice has gone through several restorations and the floor tiles were created by Steindahl in the mid 19th century.

Under the rose window there were big doors leading out on to a balcony, once the top of a grand flight of steps, I imagined. There was a beautiful tympanium and very interesting stone panels unlike anything I’ve seen before on entering a church or abbey. Later study of the guide I bought told me there weren’t steps before, rather a gallery leading from the royal apartments.

It was Geoffrey Dechaume who sculpted the tympanium and panels in the mid 19th century using 18th century drawings.

From the Chapelle we wandered back towards Notre Dame interested to see the ongoing restoration after the horrific fire in 2019.

The spring sunshine was shining on the new leaves just beginning to unfurl and it all seemed too good to be true. Fingers crossed our luck with the dry weather would continue.

We found a cafe hard up against the hoarding protecting the cathedral and ordered a grand creme for me, and a blanche beer for him. When a delivery lorry arrived and a gate opened I nipped across to take a photo of the restored front. Lou was very impressed by the photographs of the workers and the various aspects of the restoration work as it has progressed, giving value to them and recognition of the risks taken.

Due to the reflected light my photos are rubbish. A writer and a photographer are recording the whole process of the restoration. I had recently seen a documentary about the necessary and extensive work to stop the cathedral collapsing in on itself that had to take place before the restoration could begin. Incredibly complicated and painstaking work

While we were in the vicinity I wanted to visit Shakespeare and co to buy some secondhand English novels. This is a celebrated bookshop on the left bank with an unusual history originally established by a remarkable American, Sylvia Beach in 1919. Then resurrected on its present site in 1951, by another American, George Whitman, who lived an eccentric life offering open house to wandering writers in return for help in the shop.

I first became aware of its existence years ago through a book by a Canadian crime reporter, Jeremy Mercer, who wrote an autobiographical tale of his year surviving in Paris courtesy of the kind owner. ‘Books, baguettes and bed bugs’ is the UK title, ‘Time was soft then’ elsewhere. Today the shop is staffed by mainly giddy young girls who managed to overcharge me and were not best pleased when I went back for a refund.

Having crossed the Seine there was now a better view of the new ‘fleche’ that had been installed on Notre Dame’s roof with great ceremony a few months ago.

Walking away from the riverside and crowds we hoped to find somewhere for a simple lunch.

Following our noses and a twisty street we found a sandwich bar run by a cheerful young staff who sold enormous filled buns masquerading as simple sandwiches. Absolutely delicious even if a bit messy to eat!

The afternoon stretched before us with nothing in particular planned….but Mr McGregor knows me well enough that there would be something I had discovered. And there was. A passage called Brady that was known as little India according to my search results where all manner of Indian goods could be bought. It was a ‘rare covered arcade with a glass and metal roof built in 1828’. Back to the map in my pocket and Google and the relevant bus was identified. It involved a short walk along the riverbank past the souvenir shops selling a multiplicity of goods labelled Paris. I remembered buying a dozen keyrings with Eiffel towers dangling from them at the start of our China trip when Lonely Planet suggested having little gifts from your home country when travelling in the far East.

The digital signboard at the bus stop told us our bus was delayed due to disrupted traffic so we sat and watched the world go by as the sun burned through my jeans!

Hopping(!) off the number 38 at Chateau d’eau the Passage Brady was soon found.

There weren’t as many shops as I had been led to believe but several restaurants with intricately decorated facades. The antique roof was hidden behind modern plastic sheeting so may be in need of repair.

But there was one epicerie where I could have shopped til I dropped but no car boot to lob things into and I was already carrying five secondhand books and a guide to the Sainte Chapelle so I restricted myself to some favourite Indian snacks.

Back across the road to the other half of the passage which is open to the air and home to the creepiest costumiers I’d ever seen….

Then out onto rue du Faubourg Saint Martin with Gare de l’Est with its amazing fanshape window in one direction and the Porte de Saint Martin in the other. Past the incredibly splendid mairie (town hall) of the 10th arrondissement…

…a wriggle through a couple of side streets and we were back by ‘our’ bridge over the canal.

….shoes off, a cup of tea and a snooze before apero time!

Intrigued already by the Hotel du Nord we perused the menu online and seeing snails as an entrée Mr McGregor was sold. Onto le Fork to book a table. When we arrived the pavement tables were full of bright young things nursing aperos. We were ushered towards the back of the bar where steps took us up past a piano, (cabaret next Saturday we were informed) and into a comfy space with subdued lighting. The walls were covered with black and white photos which Mr McGregor investigated later. Facing me was a poster for That film…

The candle on our table was lit and menus proffered…

The meal was delicious and the ambience just right. I decided I really needed to find out about the film and the hotel connection but later!

Wednesday morning there was no rush as our train didn’t leave Austerlitz until early afternoon so when I noticed water pouring over the lock gates there was time to gawp and see what was happening. I wondered if it was quite normal then noticed the boat waiting in the lock and began to get excited. We had noted and discussed the deep grooves in the bridge across the canal and pondered if the road had turned at some point in its history. But clearly this was going to happen in front of us!

The barriers whose purpose we hadn’t really thought about came down and the road began to turn on its axis.

when it came to a stop parallel to the canal the boat, dredger? chugged through followed by a much smaller vessel. The road swivelled back, the barriers went up and the pedestrians began moving across again, saved from having to climb up and over the footbridge and its many steps.

Breakfast was served by yet another new member of staff who was a Brit and told us he could call us a taxi but why didn’t we wait until later as there was no rush to vacate our room until midday. So we decided that we’d visit the book shop opposite that the cyclist had enthused about but had been shut each morning when we passed it. I noticed the lock gates were still open but didn’t think much more about it.

The book shop was enticing and we spent ages flicking through the many photography books available. Of course, a book was bought. Lou bought me a copy of a Martin Parr that I have hankered for for a while. A series of photos commenting on the way mass tourism has impacted on the sites visited.

Back at the canal the gates had shut so, being nosey/curious I climbed up a few steps of the footbridge where I discovered the little boat was waiting to go back up the lock.

I loitered until the water had risen, the boat had gone into the last lock and the middle gates closed. For the first time I realised there were three sets of gates rather than two. Later, I discovered this is one of several double locks on the canal and it’s called Ecluse des Recollects. The canal was built in 1825 to bring clean water into Paris but also used to transport goods. It was barely used by 1960 and narrowly escaped being concreted over. What a shame that would have been.

Mr McGregor was waiting patiently and warned me to cross the street to avoid the filming taking place outside l’Hotel de Nord. Film students or just more young employed people? Apropos the 30s film of the same name, the hotel was used for interior shots but it was felt exterior ones would take too long so replicas of the hotel façade and the canal were built at the Billancourt studios. Ditches were dug and filled with water on land that was owned by the nextdoor cemetery!

Family and friends who subscribe to Netflix thought that our filming might be for ‘Emily in Paris’, not being a subscriber I have no idea.

We were on our way to a little supermarket by the creperie to buy a picnic for the train. Back at the hotel we did a bit of repacking to absorb the latest book purchase then waited for our taxi.

At Austerlitz we still had time to waste so after an abortive effort to leave our suitcases…we had no small change and the change machine had broken down…we trudged past acres of building works to find a cafe close to the jardin des plants.

The usual grand creme and beer blanche as we watched the world go by…and still the sun shone. Unbelievable to have four dry days together in this very wet spring.

Finally on the train we discovered we were in a more modern carriage. Not necessarily more spacious but with all mod cons aka WiFi and power sockets, and a bonus, a small fold out table…

So, a comfortable journey home with friends collecting us at Brive to save us messing about with a wait, a train, another wait and then a bus!

What a wonderful spree to Paree… 🥰