/ 7 November 2008

Paris by bike

The novelty factor may have worn off but the romance between Parisians and le Vélib’ continues. Back from their long summer holidays, 215 000 of my fellow Parisians have renewed their annual subscription to the city-wide bicycle scheme. These, together with other occasional cyclists, such as tourists, make up the 100 000 daily rentals. Needless to say, the scheme is a succès formidable.

Young entrepreneurs have turned the Vélib’ into businesses, organising paid-for Vélib’ tours for American tourists in the Latin quarter. You can spot the riding hordes with their red jackets on, led by a lean Parisian student in a yellow vest. For those who prefer to go at their own pace, we thought the time right to devise a Vélib’ tour, one which will take you from the world’s oldest and biggest flea markets in St-Ouen to those of Vanves. This three-hour ”mini tour de Paris” with its ups (to Montmartre) and downs (from Montmartre it’s downhill all the way) includes, bien sur, bistro and café stops. It’s a north-south 15km ride that is best enjoyed on the weekend when the flea markets are lively with jazz bands, and the Paris street traffic is at its quietest.

My favourite route starts with a cycling flanerie through the streets of St-Ouen that bear revolutionaries’ names (the area has had communist mayors for a century). In St-Ouen, the urban landscape changes drastically from that of bourgeois Paris: low-rise 19th-century red brick factories and typical tiny 1930s workers’ houses. St-Ouen wouldn’t be the same, of course, without its many flea markets spread on either side of rue des Rosiers: marchés Paul Bert, Biron, Dauphine and Vernaison, to name but a few, have attracted junk fetishists like me since 1885. And the great thing about the Vélib’ is that it has a basket that can hold anything up to the size of a cabin suitcase: very useful for that 1930s Bakelite hairdryer.

At the weekend, I often stop at La Chope des Puces for live jazz and the bistro Paul Bert for a pâté sandwich. The waiter there is always grumpy; it’s part of the folklore.

From St-Ouen, I usually cycle through Porte de Clignancourt, with its French West Indies locals living in 1930s council estates, and ride up, up, up rue Hermel where the view over the Sacré Coeur gives me just enough strength to keep going. My favourite 18th-arrondissement street is rue Lamarck, a winding road of blond stone Haussmannian buildings encasing the Montmartre hill like a snake. I always think of the chanteuse Edith Piaf, who often stopped at Le Relais Bistro. As a child I couldn’t understand why people preferred Notre Dame to Sacré Coeur — to me there was nothing more beautiful than this big chou à la crème.

In Montmartre, the best bit comes when you suddenly realise that from there on, it’s all downhill. Among my favourite stops in the descent is the leafy square sheltering the artists’ café, Le Botak. At the bottom of the hill, boulevard Rochechouart reminds the innocent cyclist that, in Paris, the sex industry and romance are often intertwined: throngs of tourists come here to ogle Pigalle’s sex shops and buy a ticket to Le Moulin Rouge’s evening spectacles.

Time to leave the 18th arrondissement and cycle through the aristocratic 9th with its private cul-de-sacs and art nouveau squares such as place St Georges, a wonder of architecture best admired from the Café A la Place St Georges. In comparison, the 10th arrondissement feels very industrious, with its narrow streets and delivery vans. I always marvel at 48 rue des Petites-Écuries, which displays some of the most beautiful caryatids to be seen in Paris. The ride through rue St-Denis (the street may be one-way but cyclists are allowed to ride southward) is the best advert for little-known multicultural Paris with Asian, Vietnamese, Algerian and Turkish street vendors cohabiting with madames waiting for clients on their buildings’ doorsteps. St-Denis is, after all, the original haunt of Parisian prostitutes.

Across the Seine lies the Latin quarter and its bookish feel. No delivery vans, no prostitutes, just handsome students and their professors.

These days, I stop at the Café Le Rostand, just to check on the last French intellectuals. The final leg of the journey is a very pleasant affair, cycling through the 14th arrondissement and its many colourful markets. And here you are, in Porte de Vanves, where antique and vintage clothes dealers have set up their stalls along avenue Marc Sangnier. Let’s find ourselves another classy bargain – using the money saved on the guided tour. —