Driving in the non-tourist parts of Paris

I have been driving in new places the past few days, places not on the usual tourist itinerary. On Sunday, I tired to go to a concert (Negro Spirituals with a chorus led by a firend of Sharif's). Found the church without difficulty thanks to the peripherique (which has become my friend) and the excellent French street atlas, but there was no place to park, so I bailed and settled for driving around a new part of Paris: the 18th Arrondisement (north central, near the Porte de Clignancourt. This is a decidedly un-tony neighborhood, on the north side of Montmartre, with lots of head-covering and chodors and stuff. Then I decided to find my way home by the city streets. There was a big one going toward central Paris (south) it went right by the Gare du Nord, and it was hideous traffic.

Still, I found my way around, despite all the one-way streets. According to Irina (my French friend's daughter) the mayor of Paris is trying to discourage driving by making everything one-way, so that in any given neighborhood, there are lots of one-way streets leading OUT, but only one or two leading IN. This makes for alot of driving in circles unless you know where you're going. I kept getting routed back to the hideous-traffic street (Boulevard Magenta, for those of you following this on a map). But finally, I got on one of the Grande Boulevards that curve around the middle of town on the right bank (north side of the river). Soon I recognized landmarks (the Opera, the grandes magazines or department stores) as I headed west. I wanted to avoid the great traffic circle at the Place de l'etoile (the Mother of All Traffic Circles, around the Arc de Triomphe). I succeeded, and in the process found a nice way home - a leafy boulevard that also permitted me to omit the big circles at Por teMaillot, which is just about as daunting as L'etoile. The problem with these very convenient features of driving in France is that they are designed to get you through the big intersections as fast as possible, without stopping. There are strict rules about the cars on the right having priorite, so it's no problem getting INTO the circle (everyone has to let you in, since you are coming from the right, in the counterclockwise motion of the traffic). The problem comes when it's time to get OUT. Then you have to use all your mirrors and look over your shoulder and not expect any quarter from the drivers behind you. I'm getting the hang of it, though. The smaller cirlces are pretty easy. And they do avoid what would otherwise be apocalyptic traffic jams. And I have a sense of accomplishment.

Then today, I had lunch with my old friend Frank Kane. (I know him from the Yale Russian Chorus.) he has been living here for 18 years, but he has gotten tired of it and he is planning to move to the world's second largest francophone city, Montreal. After a fabulous "lunch" of glazed shoulder of mutton confit with home-made potatoe chips at Les Gallopins, I drove him home to St. Denis. (An even more de-classe suburb). This is all very interesting, because it is a part of Paris that, like most tourists, I had never seen. It was easy enough getting there: it's right down the Seine a few miles (the river is running SW to NE at that point, on one of its several ox-bow meanders, but I got all turned around on the way back I blame the overcast sky, since I had no idea what direction was what, and I ended up going in exactly the wrong direction. I figured this out when I got to Le Bourget (where Lindberg landed) before I turned around. But I did have an interesting tour of the drab, industrial suburbs of the northern side of town. The only thing worthy of note was a genuinely ancient village, now completely engulfed by urban sprawl, but somehow preserved in all its medieval squalor.

Then I resorted to the freeways and got back without difficulty. (The French traffic signs are really great - they are color-coded, so you can get the level of detail you need at a drive-by glance: blue is for the autoroutes [freeways - most of them pay-through-the-noseways, but only outside of Paris], then the green signs are for the bigger trunk highways, and white is for local roads. These colored signs have, in addition to the number of the road, the name(s) of towns indicating which direction you are going. If you have some idea of where you are going, you don't even need a map!) So, I arrived back at the Bois de Boulogne (great big park on the western edge of Paris)without difficulty. I feel I am home when I get there, because it's avery easy and hassle-free drive to the house from there.