A train ride, a boat ride, a day back in Paris

I love this photo, taken by Aicha or Emma Nour. Sunflowers in the breeze, as we whisk by on the train back to Paris. There's the spirit of a quiet ride here, filled with reverie, expectancy, and the startling WHOOSH! when a bullet train passes, all eight cars in a second. The girls' laugh when I shriek. Doesn't scare them a bit.

Our journey takes two trains, with a layover in Angouleme. We manage to make it to the station in Royan with some time to spare, and the girls were not about to waste it.

Here they are, playing uno. The train comes, time to board.

The game of uno slips into a game of shuffeling the cards, using

Emma Nour's unique system, where every card is found, sorted,

then put back one by one. There's a serene enjoyment

in numbers, in making sure everyone is safe in their own family.

Meanwhile there's other thoughts to think, places to observe. We made a point of dressing well. Aicha is wearing a dress Khaldia found for her at Gallerie de Lafayette, a parisien dress we loved on her.

And then time to haul all our bags and packages off the train, with the help of some kind and muscular students, onto the platform. One heur wait. I looked longingly up at the medieval city, a cathedral crowned hillside of red tile roofs and ancient rocks. Do you think, maybe, just a quick peek? Khaldia shook her head firmly. Someone who gets lost in a village she's lived in four days cannot be trusted to find her way back to a station. What now? I pulled out the sketch pad, and suggested we all play a game of pictionary. Somehow we all started drawing animals to guess, and Khaldia, who's strength is not drawing, thought she drew a perfectly wonderful bear. EN went crazy guessing, what with the language challenges and all, with much pantomiming and various animal grunts, eliminating pigs, rats, otters, cows, horses, hyenas and who knows what else, Khaldia had to finally tell her.

A great game. We boarded the next train, hauling the suitcases up again, and watched the evening settle over the fields. Too tired to maneuver everything up and down metro steps, Khaldia kindly hailed a taxi, and we all saw Paris at night, zooming down a boulevard where square columns of light, street to waist high, like Frank Lloyd Wright lamps, line the route, illluminating bike paths.

Home to alfortville.

Sunday, the next morning, it's out to the marche, the market, to buy the food for dinner and look for gifts. Finally we find EN's yellow leggings. 3 Euros, good price, and some pretty barrettes for A's hair, to tame the curls. We're dressed and ready to go.

But how? We need tickets. It's time to buy the metro tickets.

Here's a part I'll call the

CLUELESS TRAVELER'S GUIDE FOR THE CLUELESS TRAVELER:

Paris has just instituted a Go-card for everyone. At the station booth you buy a Go card, about 2.50 E, which is a plastic card in a handy clear plastic holder.

Take it to the machines there, which look innocent enough. Place the card on the shelf, and tell the screen with your fingers that you'd like them to present their version of English. Then you choose the kind of ticket you want, one day? one week? one month? Well, we wanted one week. Bon. Now how many zones? Picture a target, and every circle a different zone with higher cost.

Khaldia lives in zone two, so we said 'two'. Good. Insert credit card. After credit card, after credit card. Not visa, master, AE, debit or communist party cards are valid. Cash. You need Euro cash. Because unless your card has a special code on the back for European transactions it will not work. mon dieu. So we trudge back up the stairs, find the ATM, get the money, trudge back downstairs, FINALLY get our cards, EN snatching each one for safe-keeping into her purse.

Khaldia signals us to follow her up the steps again. Not the train? Aicha had the route all planned. No! Bateau!

Bateau? Some kind of bus? We follow her like lemmings to the bank of the Seine, then down the steps. Ah! Bateau! Boat! Only in August, it seems there's a special on the commuter boat ride into Paris! Well that's wonderful. Just a few minutes wait. . .

Alfortville is only one of two stops on the commuter boat. Aicha studies the map to check the plan. We're headed for the Arab Institute at a certain center. Here's the boat ride. I wanted you to see the suburban houses we pass,

the homely construction and industry on the left.

The Chinese Palace hotel, and the bridges. I love the bridges, chugging under the bridges. Aicha sits inside the pleasant interior, observing through the window. EN, Khaldia and I like the wind. We would have been in the bow if they'd allowed, but this is the best we can do.

Here's the Pompideau Library, made to look like four open books facing each other.

Now off the bateau we walk towards the bus stop to take us to the museum. We're amazed to see police in shorts whiz down a ramp on roller blades, laughing with each other. Not exactly New York's Finest. More like Men in Shorts. We passed a formal place called 'Jardin du Plantes'. I had to laugh. Like what other Jardin would there be? Jardin san Plantes?' I love all gardens though. Khaldia said we could come back later, after the museum.

Note the numbers on top of the bus stop? They tell which number bus is coming, when. We know by the sign that we have a 5 minute wait before we can belly-rub our go-card on the bus door machine, hear the beep and then rush to the back or pull down the swing up seats by the back doors. Exactly 5 minutes. This is true for EVERY bus stop in the city, if you can believe it. Except for the one where the road was under construction. People got very antsy waiting. Spoiled, that's what they are. True for the metro as well. Gotta love them French. No wonder they can take a month's vacation. They save all that time wondering whether or not to wait for the next bus/train.

Here we are. The Arab Institute. When I was a little girl I loved the Madeline books. "In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines. . ." Always under Bemelman's yellow sky, little Arab figures, walked or ran by. Now there's this huge library. The windows are oculi. A fittingly scientific, mathematical building.

We took the glass elevator to exhibition floors, past floors and floors of books.

Aicha took these pictures (you can tell by the dates on the image) of the things she loved. Many early century navigational instruments, beautiful carpets, illuminated manuscripts and exquisite Q'orans (many more pictures than I've put here.) Aicha had seen many of the illustrated manuscripts in her textbooks.

At one of the galleries we looked out to see an entire river of roller-bladers passing by. Oh! no wonder the police were on rollar blades.

Afterwards it was up to the roof garden, but the cafe had finished serving for the day, so we just looked around.

Here's Aicha photographing,

and her photograph. So many of the museums are by that gleaming river.

We were hungry, and followed Khaldia to a nearby Boulangerie.

The lovely buildings by the Seine.

Khaldia's friend, married to a friend from Tiaret, treated us royally. By this time when I took out my camera, the girls were groaning. They started calling me Paparrazzi. Mamarazzi. So EN was not about to look up. She needed a little encouraging.

He was utterly kind. We left with that huge bag filled with delicious croissants, breads, chocolate pastries. Lasted us days. We bid farewell, and onto the Jardin.






No one can be sad in a garden. Everyone's inner floral bloomed, and we searched the flower beds that matched our clothes. The girls snapped away at things they loved. Like a Rosier named Hello.

Blue flowers for the blue dressed girl,

yellow flowers for the yellow leggings. . .

and yellow bag. And who's on the bench. We hear EN calling us. She and Aicha found a kitten, and someone who let them pet the dear thing.

It's as grand and pretensious a city garden as you can imagine, with a few run-down buildings, and, unlike BBG, graced with Greek goddesses. Hard to imagine this at BBG. She's Parisian, through and through.

Yes, Khaldia, too, can grace a garden.




Can you pose at the arbors EN? Uh, maybe not. Enough. Time to go home.

But we pass this amazing mosque, or masjhid. We decide to explore. How could you not?

Look at Aicha's photos.

I love this photo. One of the few pigeons in Paris that EN didn't chase. Yet.

Back under ground to the metro home. However many lines we have to transfer from, rumbling quietly underground, on Khaldia's 8 line the train surfaces to cross the Seine, and we know we're almost home. Ready for tomorrow. Ready for the Eiffel tower.

Blessings!

d.