We’re up at a reasonable hour for a Sunday and Lynette volunteers for a trip to one of the many boulangeries nearby and returns with some very tasty croissants and bread.

It seems to make sense to then explore some local suggestions for coffee and find 10 Belles, just across the canal in Rue de Lancy.

It’s a small ‘hole in the wall’ and we find ourselves chatting to three women from Byron Bay on one side and a Florida brewer on the other, as well as a number of locals who happen by.

All in all, a lovely coffee and time to chat and swap notes before we wander back across the Canal and take note of the new graffiti which has appeared since we saw the wall being repainted yesterday.  It reminds us of the vibrancy of the ‘Hit the Bricks‘ event in Newcastle last year and shows the level of creativity which seems to pervade this nice relaxed neighbourhood in Paris.

We’ve decided to take a look at Le Marais this morning before cruising along past the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens, to Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees.

We wander over across the Boulevarde de Magenta and find some velibs and are quickly on our way down into Le Marais, where a couple of blocks are closed off to everything apart from pedestrians, bikes, scooters and rollerblades for Sunday as part of the usual process here, which allows more relaxed browsing from the large numbers who come to stroll around the narrow streets: cobblestones and cafes; food and fashion.

We see a variety of lovely bars and cafes as well as providores and even a comptoir for dogs and cats, where we get chatting to a fellow Westy owner whose dog Coda makes us just a little sad to be missing our dog Daisy.

As we emerge from the Marais, it’s time for more bikes and a ride along the cycleway on the right bank of the Seine.

At one stage, we pause near the Hotel de Ville, or Town Hall, where queues of people wait to cast their vote in an opportunity to have a say in the budget for Paris,  Around on the other side of the building a climate change rally is getting ready to make more noise, and we’re reminded of the rich history which Paris has of people being open and, often, loud about their beliefs and expectations about ways of doing things.

Just along from the Hotel de Ville, we dock our bikes and notice that a cafe is showing the Rugby League from Sydney.  It’s time for a toilet stop, so we pull up a table to enjoy a quiet drink before heading on further.

In the meantime, the skies decide to open and we sit and enjoy the spectacle of the rain across the river to Le Conciergerie, and our short stop turns into lunch.

Eventually the rain eases and then stops altogether and we find another velib rack and cycle on westward past Les Halles and the back of the Louvre to Place Vendome.

A look at the refurbishment of the Ritz in progress and a continued wander past the exclusive shops in this area takes us to our next bike rack where we decide to grab 2 more velibs and ride through the Place de la Concorde and on up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.  The ride is a lot of fun and certainly a much more pleasant way to get to our destination than threading our way through the packed sidewalks where throngs of tourists vie for a place to walk.

Despite the shakiness of a handheld Flip camera filmed while riding, you can hopefully get an idea of the scene in the short clip below.

We dock our bikes and walk the last hundred metres to the Arc de Triomph before finding a Metro station and going back to Concorde station to walk through the western end of the Tuileries Gardes to the Musee de l’orangerie where we are able to see many of the paintings which have, from time to time, been included in major exhibitions at the Art Gallery of NSW and elsewhere in Australia. 

A particular favourite is a Modigliani which is the original of one which hangs in our entry foyer at home.

Monsieur Guillame looks just as cool in ‘the flesh’ as he does at our place.

We wander through some other great works and move outside as the gallery staff, thankfully, get ready to close for the day.

Outside, and taking advantage of some scattered chairs, we watch over the Place de la Concorde where a procession of wedding cars does laps around the centre obelisk, horns tooting and drawing attention to the newly weds.  The lovely scene, with fountains and the beginnings of the magnificent avenue of the Champs Elysees seems massively incongruent with the imagined view, back in the 1790s when around 1500 people were decapitated in the same square by the newest death dealing invention: la guillotine.

We’re weary now and stroll back through the gardens to the Metro and home via the Jacque Bonsergent metro station.

We walk to a Cambodian restaurant nearby which is another recommendation from our airbnb host and enjoy a great dinner before crashing for the night.

As we walk out of our apartment block to greet the day it seems that Paris is obliging with some wonderful autumn weather. Chez Prune is a lot less lively this morning but still a place for locals to gather for breakfast.  We walk on through the nearby streets to find a cafe which Lynette has read about.

Holybelly is a short walk away and very popular as we find when we are placed on a wait list to get in.  It’s worth the short wait, as the coffee is excellent and a pancake stack interspersed with fried eggs is an interesting breakfast option which turns out to also be very tasty.

The streets around here also host a number of creative industries and we walk past a couple of co-working spaces providing coffee, wifi and access to shared spaces.

Almost opposite this co-workshop is Craft, another cafe co-working space, where young people get about their business.

Breakfast over, it’s time to try out Velib, the Paris cycle sharing system which has racks of bikes right throughout the city. Luckily, the Velib station has an option to choose English as our language so that we can use our cards to purchase a seven day pass which costs 8 Euros and provides us with a user number which we can use at any of the Velib locations throughout the city.  As for the Boris Bikes in London, the first half hour is free, as the system actually aims to encourage use for short trips as opposed to tourist hire.

We choose to follow the route of Canal Saint Martin southward until it meets the Seine near Place de la Bastille.

The bikes are very sturdy and obviously get lots and lots of usage.  They have a standard twist grip 3 speed selector and we’re quickly off on the cycleway which runs down toward the river.

The cycleway is great where it exists.  Sometimes, for seemingly no reason, the cycleway crosses to the other side of the road or simply disappears where cars are reverse parked across it.  One way or another, we continue on to the market place just near Place de la Bastille.  We’ll possibly come back tomorrow or another day when the markets are in full swing to check them out.

The final stage south of Place de la Bastille acts as both an entry point to the Canal Saint Martin and also a marina for a large number of boats of all sorts.

Near here, we decide to cross to the left bank of the Seine and to follow it westward, along to Notre Dame, sitting on its island in the middle.

Along the way we can see cruise boats on the Seine with one looking particularly attractive as a jazz combo on the upper deck entertains a wedding party.

As we get closer to Notre Dame it quite predictably becomes busier, and it seems like a good time to dock the bikes and we find one of the many cafes to have a sit and relax and a quiet drink before pressing onward.

We leave the Seine behind and select another couple of bikes to pedal through the Latin quarter and onward to the Boulevarde Saint Michel.

You live in a fancy apartment, on the Boulevarde Saint Michel; where you keep your Rolling Stones records, and a friend of Sacha Distel –

Where do you go to my lovely? Peter Sarstedt.1969

We’ve had to deal with a number of narrow busy streets to get here so dock the bikes and decide that the time is right for some lunch; choosing a shared platter of charcuterie and fromage in a cafe on the street, where a glimpse of the very tip of the Eiffel Tower peeks above the trees. Our server tells us that it’s about an hour’s walk away.

Back on fresh Velib bikes, we enter the Luxembourg Gardens and criss cross down through the pathways in the gardens where hundreds of people sit enjoying the sunshine and taking time out in beautiful surrounds.

The gardens date from the early 1600s and there are just so many lovely scenes throughout as people choose their own preferred way to enjoy.

While some simply sit and contemplate, others engage in card and board games and, when watching some of the people it almost seems that here are hundreds of people waiting for something to happen.

Out of the gardens and a bit of a navigational error sees us heading, instead of westward toward the Eiffel Tower, taking a detour through the Montparnasse before cycling down to the Avenue de Suffren, just near Champ de Mars and the massive Ecole Militaire.

We stop for a drink at a cafe where, for the first time we find the response is that ‘Je ne comprends pas Anglais.’ We’ve been surprised and pleased at the extent to which the people we’ve met have accommodated our poor attempts at French.

By this time, the sky is black as a storm gathers, and the light looking down the Champ de Mars to the Eiffel Tower is quite spectacular.

We head for the nearest Metro station to avoid getting drenched and manage to deal with the ticket machine to collect a ‘carnet’ of ten tickets, which will allow us to ride the metro.

The Metro is a well known and massive interconnected system and it’s evident the there is a concerted effort to make it both attractive and user friendly.

Our trip takes us back under the Seine until we alight at Republique, where a number of lines cross and where we are close to Rue Beaurepaire and our chance to get home to the apartment before heading out later to walk to Le Fine Mousse,  a Craft Beer bar, for a drink and dinner.

We chose the Canal Saint Martin area as it seemed to be a nice location where we could continue our association with canals and also be a little bit off the tourist trail.  As we were to find on our first night here, it also provides access to a huge amount of lovely cafes and restaurants in the immediate area.

With Paris turning on a warm evening for our arrival, lots of people sit along the edge of the canal itself enjoying a drink in the early evening as we investigate the bar on the corner; Chez Prune, where we are able to grab a beer and a glass of wine before looking around for one of the local restaurants which was included in a list of suggestions by our AirBnB host for the week.  It turned out that one of the places, Le Verre Vole, was only about a hundred metres away along the edge of the canal, and we make our way there and are able to get a table for two to enjoy some great wholesome food in a small place dominated by their selection of wines lining the walls.

Leaving the restaurant, we visit the local supermarket to pick up a few essentials before heading home to rest and get ready for our next days of exploring Paris.

We’re keen to give the Velib system a try in the morning.

Friday morning sees us up and packing and checking out of our Shoreditch apartment.  It’s been a great location to stay, with tube station and bus stop almost outside the front door and a plethora of choices for cafes, pubs and other bars in the immediate area.

After checking out we opt for a taxi to St Pancras International as, despite the effectiveness of the tube, many stations, including Old Street are difficult to manage when pushing large luggage and trying to negotiate stairs when heavy laden. It makes us aware of the issues associated with disabled access.

We hail a cab in City Road and proceed to get entertained throughout the trip by a self confessed London septuagenarian who keeps up a great conversation as we drive to St Pancras international.

We arrive at St Pancras and find the ‘Left Luggage’ area where we check our large suitcases in for safe-keeping until closer to our departure. Then, it’s off in search of brunch and what better place than Searcy’s Champagne Bar – (without the Champagne, but with the eggs and coffee.

Eventually we retrieve our luggage and pass through security and passport control to wait for our train.  Up the travelators and onto the train which pulls out of St Pancras spot on time to head out of London at speeds of 150 miles per hour until really opening the throttles to a 185 mph run. Interestingly, I find that there are a few unusual ear pressure issues related to the high speed train

We’re held up briefly waiting for a green signal near the entrance to the channel tunnel and then onward through the darkness to emerge in France. It’s fascinating watching the place names, familiar from history, on the live feed of maps as we head East and then turn South toward Paris.

We arrive at Paris Gare du Nord at 5.50pm and spend the next 45 minutes in a queue for a taxi before arriving at our AirBnB apartment for the week in the 10th Arrondissement just near the Canal St Martin, where Charles, our host, is on hand to explain everything and provide an excellent welcome to Paris. Once again, we are reminded of the value and experience of an AirBnB experience vs a hotel for both price and a ‘local living’ vibe.

Our last full day in London was a full day indeed, with a trip to Oxford Street and a look around some of the famous shops there.  Before visiting Selfridges and Marks and Spencer, we managed to get a micro SIM cut down to a nano to provide another international travel SIM.

We’d bought international travel SIMs online from Flightcentre and the idea is that, for an upfront fee, the card will allow data roaming by picking up on the best local 3G signal.  So, in London, our devices would jump from O2 to Vodaphone or EE or whatever, and, once we emerged from the channel tunnel on the French side, our SIM cards found the best French connection and, so far, haven’t missed a beat, with iPhone 5 and iPad mini keeping us up to date and assisting navigation, especially with great apps like City Bikes, which shows us locations of Boris Bikes in London and then the Velib in Paris, as well as dozens of cities around the world!

Our excursion to Oxford Street then led to a bus ride from Oxford Street down along Park Lane and westward again to Knightsbridge and Harrods. Using the Oyster Card, with a 7 day travel pass has made using the Tube, the DLR and buses a seamless experience. It is just a matter of tapping on and off in the tube and tapping on on buses.Not sure how the rollout of the Opal card is going in NSW but the time must possibly come internationally where there can be a universally recognised method of accessing public transport and services by unique identifier technology by smart card or physiological identifier linked to a payment source.

After some time wandering through the floors of amazing clothing and accessories at Harrods we had a light lunch in one of the many eateries inside the store itself and then headed off across the road near the Natural History Museum before picking up some more Boris bikes and rolling on into Hyde Park again.

We pedal to the Western end of the park and past Kensington Palace where many of the members of the royal family have apartments. A few minutes later and we are able to wander on down to Bayswater tube station before returning home to Old Street with a couple of changes.

We’ve managed to catch up with a friend that we’ve got to know due to his friendship with Jenna and Adrian; our daughter and son in law.  Asif has caught a train down from Loughborough in the midlands to catch up and we spend a few nice hours with some good food and some drinks.

We meet near Kings Cross/St Pancras and its interesting that the trip of around 160km from Loughborough can be completed in just over an hour on the fast train. We’re being reminded all the time of the inadequacy of the rail infrastructure that we have in NSW where the shorter trip from Newcastle to Sydney actually takes longer these days then it used to with the steam powered Newcastle Flyer. We are clearly at a significant disadvantage from the urban sprawl of our cities and the lack of population density to drive demand and frequency of service.

Still, a lovely evening to end our stay in London, and we grab the tube home to Old Street for a good night’s sleep before our Friday departure via the Eurostar to Paris.

Back in the early seventies the exaggerated stereotype of the Aussie abroad was often based on Earls Court, and achieved some comic notoriety with the release of ‘The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie.’

So, with random lyrics from the song rattling around in my head we found ourselves at Earls Court tube station before a brief wander up Earls Court Road.

“The adventures of Barry Mackenzie; dinky di tales of a true blue boy….”

A quick coffee and croissant and then onto the bikes to ride South down Earls Court road toward the Thames where we find that the tide is out and a row of houseboats lie at angles in the mud, waiting for the flood tide to refloat them.

Riding on along the Chelsea embankment there’s a great view across the river toward Battersea where more new housing developments are taking shape.  It’s a greyer day today but still much warmer than we would have anticipated.

A left turn takes us North again toward the Kings Road in Chelsea and we dock our trusty Boris bikes before a wander along the strip in Chelsea where a number of boutiques and quirky shops attract some attention. It’s clearly a different part of town as I pause to watch a chauffeur cruising by in a large black rolls, and London cabs spin on a sixpence to take a fare going in the opposite direction.

With a browse and purchase in Anthropologie completed it’s time for lunch and we ride up Sloane Avenue into South Kensington to find Jak’s cafe tucked away in a back street full of high end galleries and boutiques.

Just up the road, there’s a Dry Cleaner which obviously has some interesting stuff to clean judging by the car parked outside, and just across the street is a gallery with a fine message in the window for publicists everywhere.

This is a lovely area for a walk around and we wander up toward the Victoria and Albert Museum to find a lovely Italian cafe for a coffee and cake stop before finding another bike rack and heading up to Hyde Park for a ride along the Serpentine.

A photo stop opposite the Royal Albert Hall provides the chance for a local to warn us of the perils of riding bikes on non-marked cycleways, so we keep an eye out for the places to ride as we roll down to Hyde Park Corner and the statue to the Duke of Wellington.  From here it’s an easy walk down Grosvenor Place to Victoria Station where we try unsuccessfully again to find a data SIM that will be workable for the rest of our trip.  The crowds are, by now, streaming in the opposite direction toward Victoria tube, so we repair to a pub for a rest and regroup before setting off on another bit of discovery.

Wednesday morning was time for a haircut. We’d noticed a barber shop just down the road and headed there to find that the chair was empty and ready for business. ‘Just a number three and a bit of a tidy up please’

As we got chatting, (as one does when in the chair), it turns out that the barber describes himself as an ‘old school turkish barber.’  He offered us Turkish coffee while he got on with the business of clipping my head.

We talked of Gallipoli and stories from both sides of that conflict from nearly a hundred years ago.  He made the comment that while modern Australia may have started as a gaol it is now seen as one of the safest countries on earth.

It seems that when asking for a ‘bit of a tidy up’ this can mean all sorts of things.  Soon I was having ears waxed, face ‘threaded’ and singed with a flaming taper before a facial and scalp massage. A lot more treatment that the usual ‘number 3 please’ at one of the local barbers in Newcastle.

So, a really interesting and unique experience.  Tidied up and ready for another London day.

Our Tuesday started out with a trip to the Apple store at Covent Garden to visit the genius bar and get a problem with Lynette’s phone sorted out so that it could use the international travel SIM which we’d purchased before leaving Australia. The nano SIM in my iPad mini has worked a treat and it’s invaluable for keeping a check on location, planning tube and transport routes, locating bike racks and just about anything else imaginable.

We then spent a bit of time wandering around the markets and surrounding streets along with a short excursion up Regent Street, where Burberry was displaying some of the very latest shoes and fashion accessories.

Lunch consisted of some great pasta at Jamie Oliver’s Italian in Upper St Martins Lane, before retracing our steps to a store on Regent Street where I’d managed to lose my glasses which trying on a shirt! Luckily the glasses had been handed to the store security and I was very pleased to have my ‘eyes’ back again.

It was fun having a browse around the West End and we spotted The Ivy, where Adrian, our son in law, once worked.

The weather is remarkably warm and humid as we swelter in a packed train on the tube from Piccadilly Circus to St Pauls via Holborn before a walk over the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern.

There’s a trick to cramming into the last bit of space on a tube carriage where, just as the doors close, it’s necessary to bend shoulders and head forward so that the doors can close.  It’s not a very pleasant way to travel and we’re glad to find a coffee and a chance to sit and regroup before posing for tourist snaps in front of the massive dome of St Pauls.

We pause for a while to check out a monument near St Pauls which is surrounded by wreaths. The monument maintains the gratitude to, and memory of, firefighters who were killed during the Blitz on London which commenced on September 7th 1940.

The human stories which emerge of the massive devastation in London during the Blitz and then in later attacks by the V1 and V2 rockets provoke reactions of horror which are almost unimaginable to us. While the people in London were being exhorted to ‘Keep calm and carry on,’ the faces on the street were strained from trauma, exhaustion and the denial of basic services for weeks on end. A first hand account from a man who experienced it all also adds a poignant reminder of that fact that around three and a half million children were evacuated from London in the first days of the war: mostly to destinations and people unknown by their mothers.

We walk on, down to the Thames and across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, rubbing shoulders with tourists and hearing the sounds of many different languages; including those of the protagonists from that time, almost 75 years ago, when terror was a constant companion.  Humanity seems to have a remarkable ability for forgiveness, which seems implausible given the atrocities we witness today in an era where those who suffered so much back then may have wished we could more sincerely embrace the notion of peace.

The Tate Modern galleries are almost dwarfed by the massive building in which they have been housed: a former oil fired power station which closed in the eighties.  The huge chimney stack is a stark reminder of its previous use.

It’s past beer o’clock by now so we have a brief drinks break at a bar overlooking the river and Blackfriars Bridge before walking back to St Pauls and climbing aboard a 76 bus back to Old Street: leg weary and sore footed.  Time for a rest before checking out some of our local options for dinner.

One of our AirBnB hosts had provided us with some local recommendations, so we head along Old Street Shoreditch to find Tramontana, in Curtain Street and a lovely dinner of Tapas, in readiness for our Spanish experience in another week and a half.

It’s great, after dinner to have a wander around the cobbled streets and see the buzz of an area where population density drives a vibrant night time economy in an area which has reinvented itself.

All around London, signs of construction work add a sense that it is a city still very much on the move.

No more moving for us today.

Time for a rest in readiness for more adventures tomorrow!

For some reason, every time I think of Camden Town in London, I hear the lyrics from London Still, by The Waifs.

Last night, we headed over to Camden to have something to eat and catch some music.

Even on a Monday night the streets were buzzing with life and we wandered up to Camden Lock and found the Ice Wharf where we grabbed a bite to eat.

The place looked lovely from the bridge over the lock, but they seem not to have their act together in the service department. Still, a nice place for a meal and a pint before crossing over the bridge to Dingwalls where a Monday Open Mic night is under way.

A guy who describes himself as a cockney from Hackney; son of a Scot and a mum from Mauritius decides to befriend us. He’s bemoaning the changes in the East End as the demographic changes and he exhorts us to get a train out to the East Coast for a ‘good old knees-up; ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ style. We might leave that for another time.

A wander down the street finds us at The Blues Kitchen where the barman wears a Cat Empire T-Shirt and the crowd just alighted from a tour bus compete with the piano player by seeing who can talk loudest.

We hurry back to the tube and, with only two choices of branch on the Northern Line manage to select the wrong option. A change at Euston fixes the problem and it’s home to Old Street.  Nice end to a good day.

Today has challenged a lot of stereotypes of London weather as, instead of grey skies, rain and dreariness, we set off to ride the eastern end of the Regents Canal in sunshine and twenty something degrees. Before heading off we decide to check out Shoreditch Grind which is just on the opposite side of the Old Street roundabout. They serve excellent coffee!

It’s then onto the tube and down to Bank, to change to the DLR.  Two stops later and we’re at Limehouse and the Limehouse Basin; where the Regents Canal is linked to the Thames.

It doesn’t look like many narrow boats have been coming and going through the connecting lock though, as a green slime floats on top of the water, showing little sign of disturbance.

There’s a rack of Boris bikes just to the right of that overpass you can see and we go through the routine of inserting our cards, getting the release code and liberating our trusty bikes which are free to use for the first thirty minutes. It becomes a fun challenge to ride for just under thirty minutes before finding a rack to dock the bike and then look around for a distraction; like a cafe or pub, before liberating another bike to continue on.

The canal is proving a fascinating juxtaposition of the old and the new; as the East End of London transmogrifies and the cockneys from Hackney watch the familiar blend with the unusual.

We became aware of the canal when researching our trip and noticing a couple of stretches of water near where we were planning to book an apartment in Hoxton. A bit of googling and it became clear that this was a part of London that it would be fun to explore.

The beautiful sunshine today created lovely reflections in the water and perfect conditions for the joggers and walkers out along the towpath.

Compared with the upper arm of the canal above Islington, this reach provides an elongated pool through parks and refurbished warehouses; new developments and towering reminders of the past.

I can’t help hearing the lyrics of ‘Dirty Old Town’ by Ewan Maccoll in my head as we cycle past the massive frames of the gasworks.

I met my love,
By the gas works wall.
Dreamed a dream,
By the old canal.

Apparently Maccoll was writing about Salford, but it’s easy to imagine how this part of London must also have worn the soot and dust of the industrial era.

At the far end of the street is the Cat and Mutton and, in between, lots of quirky shops and cafes.