Freeway Free in France: Back to the 7me Arrondissement
My favorite pied a terre in Paris is the Jardin D’Eiffel, just off the market street Rue Cler (see above) by one block. 15 years ago when I first stayed the decor was dominated by giant yellow Monet-esque flowers on Royal blue on drapes, pictures, and murals throughout (see below) , and the clientele favored busloads of Canadian and German students and tourists on a budget.
The old Jardin has undergone a 21st century revamp, and is now robed mostly in subtle shades of gray with some paisley drapes to brighten the feel (see above). The elevator, however, is no larger; it can accommodate two people and two suitcases on if you are on friendly terms, or you can stash the suitcases in the elevator, push the button,and race the elevator up the stairs. DB and I are sharing a room facing the street – not the best, as the next door neighbor is the police station and we expect to hear sirens all night. From the back rooms, if you lean out the window, you can glimpse the Eiffel Tower.
We arrived after an efficient breakfast at La Vielle Auberge, a lightning transit to the train station in Souillac, a bit of a hassle with ticket’s but we eventually got on the train and enjoyed four hours of French scenery, shading from Romanesque yellow sandstone with steep-pitched roofs and bell-towers in the Dordogne to white stucco with mansard roofs and steeples in the Touraine. Gare Austerlitz is large and bustling but well-signed, our Algerian taxi driver was friendly and expansive about what we should be sure to see in Paris, and the staff at the Jardin welcomed us like old friends.
We took the Metro to the Place de ‘l’Opera and picked up our museum passes for two days of urgent museum – going. This may be our last joint adventure for awhile, as we each have different plans for our stay in Paris. WB missed the Louvre on her previous visit and expects to spend two days there, but wants also to fit in the renovated Musee d’Orsay, the Rodin, the Pere LaChaise cemetery, and perhaps a tour of the opera. DM has a friend dating back to a working stint in London who came to meet her and is staying at the Jardin, and also has a cousin who wants to return the hospitality DM showed him in the states, so after tonight’s dinner she will not share evenings until Sunday. Dianne has not been in Paris in decades and has murky memories, so she may take the #69 bus tour around the city per Rick Steves’ recommendation and then follow her interests. 
I have in mind the renovated d’Orsay tomorrow together with l’Orangerie which houses Monet’s water lilies, then there is another exhibit at the Grand Palais I want to find out about, and I need to visit Notre Dame and the Holocaust victims memorial and of course Berthillon’s ice cream and the Art Deco atrium of La Samaritaine, and Le Pere LaChaise cemetery with WB on Sunday. Our walking tour will have been good prep for pounding all this Gothic pavement. Right now we are getting cleaned up in preparation for a celebration meal at l’Affriole, which it appears has developed enough of a reputation that Michele (who is French with family and friends in Lyon) had heard of it.
I am trembling at the potential cost. But we have economized greatly up until now, having scrounged for lunches at the hotel breakfast buffets and having dinner and breakfasts prepaid during our hiking tour.
We decided to walk back from L’Opera (which was undergoing a revamp of its own behind a Rene Magritte-inspired façade) and stopped at a street-side cafe on Rue Tour Maubourg for wine, tea, and people -watching. We saw Cinderella’s glass coach go by, pulled by a rather ordinary brown horse and with two dotty English tourists inside. Such is life in a tourist city.
Unfortunately l’Affriole did not live up to my memory. New management has revamped the decor here also, opening up the front of the place for sidewalk seating, which leaves one exposed to the curious glances of passers-by and other hazards. In our case, a large dog decided to deposit an equally large souvenir on the sidewalk just by our table, and the dog’s owner loftily prepared to ignore the awkward incident until the restaurateur bounded out and demand she clean up after her pet. She argued, gave in, and “cleaned up” by kicking the mess to the curb, then wiping her shoe carefully on the edge. Not the most appetizing of beginnings.
The food, instead of bringing on the sort of ecstasy seen in “When Harry Met Sally,” did not measure up to either my memory or the best of the food we had enjoyed while hiking. So much for my “local expertise”. But I still have a few 7me arrondissement aces up my sleeve.
At about the halfway point of our first day of hiking (9km) we felt raindrops. Drizzle turned to gentle rain, enough to rate dragging out our rain gear – all except DB, who had left her poncho behind to save weight. (DB has some curvature of the spine and her backpack is not very comfortable, so she chose to leave some basic stuff, including sufficient water. Fortunately both W and I tend to err in the opposite direction, and were able to keep her hydrated with our extra bottles, and fairly dry with my little polka-dot umbrella.). The ponchos added an unnecessary extra layer of warmth, so we kept trying to do without every time we felt the rain slacken, and then had to re-don when we got out of the sheltering woods or the rain renewed its attack.
We oohed and ached over a chateau whose ruined towers loomed above the woods on the left (it was burned by the Nazis in WWII) and exclaimed over weird fungi growing on logs and near the edges of the path. We noted pear orchards, apple trees heavy with fruit, an occasional vineyard lush with grapes awaiting harvest. We sampled wild blackberries at the side of the road, and tried to open chestnut husks to get at the chestnuts inside. (Chestnuts are stickery!” And we were counting down the remaining KM by tenths.
Still in Arles
We started off with a stop in the 12th century at the Cloistre de St. Trophies, a cool and calm spot right off the main square. The cloister included many statues which had been so badly eroded you could hardly make them out, but a few that had been sheltered are very human and evocative. Then we walked along the wall of the city overlooking the Rhone, well culverted against flooding, admiring an old Romanesque church which had been converted during the Revolution to a union hall for shepherds, a large domed building which was the remains of a steam bath built by Constantine, and a number of long views down the river to unnamed castles and fortifications in the distance.
Scanning the arena, we spotted her in the Tower! Heading back to the tower, I heard my name called. It was DB, AWOL from the garden, who had just seen WB at the base of the tower. “I’ll meet you at the entrance to the tower, ” she said. By the time we got there, WB was back a quarter of the way around the arena, and DB was nowhere to be seen. And so on. We finally joined forces and made our last tourist stop at the old Roman theatre, much pillaged (as was the Arena) for building materials over the years, but now set up for open air musical and theatrical performances. We tested the acoustics and found them sadly lacking compared to Ephesus in Turkey or the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. 
Allyson Johnson 