BOATING THROUGH PARIS
On Wednesday we had a romantic dream of boating through Paris. We were going to glide through Paris, leaning against the rail of a sleek boat, taking photographs as Paris revealed itself as we floated by.
But first we had trouble finding the boat, when we did find it our resevervations hadn’t gone through, when we were finally signed in almost all the seats were taken and we had to sit separately. Our pack of tourists were stretched in four lines of seats, squeezed together, facing each other in two rows so that we had to photograph between or over people, and we were all photographing in every direction. We started out along the Seine where we passed a number of huge ornate buildings while the guide narrated, first in French and then English, which I could barely hear. Glumly we faced each other and twitched while the huge buildings with their stories slid past.
And then we came to Canal Saint Martin, a very narrow canal at first, almost the width of the boat and it was more like taking a bus ride than a boat ride with passers by looking at us curiously, only feet away.
Canal Saint Martin must drop at least 200 feet between our destination, La Villette, and the Seine. So to get to La Villette, we had to enter nine locks. At each lock the boat would stop. A gate would close at the lower end, the water of the canal would flow in and lift us 15 feet and then we would move on, except that at times there were two locks, one after the other, and we would move on only one boat length, have a new gate close and rise another 15 feet. Each lock took about ten minutes so that 90 minutes of our boat trip was sitting still, looking at each other. Often we had to wait until it was our turn to go through the lock. At first the locks with their great churning of water were exciting, but then this began to wear off.
But breaking this monotony was our underground passage beneath the bocce ball courts and playgrounds and gardens that Susie and I walked along only a few days earlier. In the eerie blue lit darkness as we passed under round screened openings to the gardens above we moved for hundreds of yards. But even that became monotonous with nothing to see except the circular ceiling. Finally we got to La Villette a giant amusement park on the outskirts of Paris, 40 minutes late, because, as the guide apologized for, the locks were very slow today.
By this time we were very hungry after promising ourselves we would find the best Italian restaurant, La Madonnina, in Paris as suggested by my brother, which we had thought we had eaten at the other day, only to discover that we had eaten in a hole in the wall Italian pizza joint.
We walked and we walked through the the huge, colorful, La Villette amusement park to the Metro and got there in time for a wonderful Italian meal of an eggplant starter, clam pasta and tiramisu and coffee and headed home happy.
It is not that we didn’t think the boat ride was worth doing, and that the experience wasn’t interesting, it was my romantic expectations that soured the experience for me. If I had gotten on board with no expectations and accepted the ride for what it was and listened attentively to the guide and enjoyed being jostled by a group of tourists of which I was very much one, and enjoyed their responses, I would have had a much better time.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 