Whenever I’ve been to Paris, I’ve spent the whole time aware of the slow moving, camouflage-coloured water of the River Seine. I always seem to be walking beside it, crisscrossing it on one of the many bridges (there are 37 just in Paris), surrounded by it at Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite, or sitting beside it with a sandwich, a book and the company of pigeons, watching with envy the people who lived on the houseboats – why are they not besieged by the pigeons?
After all these flirtations, I decided that it was high time I got to know this river a little better. And perhaps discover what lurks beneath that camouflage. So I took a boat trip.
Parc De La Villette
Rushing out of the Musee d’Orsay station, breakfast in hand, (a croissant naturellement – you have to love the fact that even the newspaper kiosks in the stations in Paris sell high quality croissants for the commuter crowd), I saw the canal boat company sign, obediently crossed the pedestrian bridge and hurtled down the spiral steps and then – where was the boat? And where were the other people? Had the croissant cost me my river trip? Luckily not, it’s just that the canal boat is low enough to get under all those bridges, and it was huddled behind a rather large black-barge houseboat where a man sat on deck with his coffee checking his emails in the sun; I want his life.
Anyway, boat found, I boarded and joined a few other tourists and a hoard of French schoolchildren. Clearly it was time they learnt about their river too.
We set off and headed east up the wide river, past the Musee d’Orsay, the imposing old train station which is now the best place to see Impressionist art. It must have been great to arrive there by train, stepping down from the carriage, out of the station and right on to the banks of the Seine. Although, saying ‘banks’ probably paints too romantic of a picture – the river is tightly held back by steep walls of stone and concrete. Up at street level, there is a busy road and promenade lined by the second-hand booksellers with their iconic green stalls, below there is the tree and stone river walk where Parisian dogs chase balls and tourists take a rest from sightseeing. But you’re still well above water level – except at times of extreme flooding, such as in 1910 when the river rose 20 feet (6 metres) above normal.
Boat with French Schoolchildren
Soon we were heading below the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge which was finished in 1607. It connects the Rive Gauche, the left bank, with the Rive Droite, the right bank. The two sides of the river have quite distinct characters – the left or south side is the area of writers and artists, the Latin Quarter, home to bohemians. By contrast, the right or north side is elegant, sophisticated, expensive side. There is the Champs Elysees, the Rue de Rivoli, and the Louvre, which we were currently gliding past.
As I pulled out my light, flaky croissant, there were people already sitting in the sunshine on the banks of the river, coffees in hand, enjoying the first of the summer warmth. The kids on the boat ran from side to side excitedly, and the tourists were seeing it all through the lens of their video cameras, one of them repeating the guide’s words in hushed tones, for the tiny microphone’s ears only. As we passed under yet another bridge and were caught in its low stone echo-chamber, I wondered how it would sound played back on a huge plasma screen bringing Paris to some-town USA.
Then the piece-de-resistance of any trip to the Seine loomed up before us: the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Magnificent in its dark gothic splendour of towers and gargoyles, it’s even more awe-inspiring from down at river-level. I was by now almost overwhelmed by envy of the people living on the houseboats moored along that stretch of the river – just imagine waking up to that sight each day!
As we left Notre Dame and its perch on the Ile de la Cite behind – the most expensive real estate in Paris – I looked back and realised that the best view was from here, looking downstream at the tip of the island and the beautiful flying buttresses at this curved end of the cathedral. The canal boat trip has a morning sailing from the Musee d’Orsay and an afternoon trip back the other way – for this approach to Notre Dame alone I was wishing I’d taken the afternoon option.
A boat full of French firemen soon distracted me from the grand architecture – I never claimed to be deep – and then we were turning off the Seine River and into the canal Saint-Martin.
Built between 1805 and 1825 to bring fresh drinking water to the citizens of Paris, the canal is 2.8 miles (4.5 km) long and rises 82 feet (25metres) in altitude from the Seine to its end at Bassin de la Villette. It has five locks – one single and four double, and we were about to pass through every one of them. For me, there’s something wonderful about locks, a staircase made of water. I was excited.
Canal Saint-Martin
We went through the first lock, the single lock, where the canal and the Seine meet. Trains rattled heavily above us and the schoolkids ran to the sides excitedly to watch the water rushing in to lift our boat. (Actually, we all did that.) Then we were amongst lots of lovely houseboats, and many extremely expensive ones. The boat-owners pay an annual fee of between 3000 and 10,000 euro to live there, very cheap considering the part of Paris they are in. The only catch is the ten-year waiting list for a place.
And then we were into the tunnel. Built in 1860 to enable Haussmann’s plan of boulevards for the city, it’s a lovely low vault of brick with regular air holes bringing in light and tendrils of ivy. It runs for 1.2 miles (2 km), nearly half the length of the canal. Although I enjoyed the mystery of the tunnel, I was quite pleased to see the light at the end of it because I was getting a little cold.
And then we were into all those locks. My excitement lasted for the first few anyway. Then I was just a little colder. Excited by the sudden advent of summer weather after months of cold, damp London winter, I had ventured onto the streets of Paris that morning with all the optimism of a born fool. Although the sun was warm, and the day was getting warmer all the time, the wind off the water was cool, and the canal was lined with leafy, overhanging trees. In mid-summer I would have been grateful for their generous shade. Even if I’d had a jacket I would have enjoyed their dappled play of light. But at that moment, all I felt was cold. And with each lock, I got a little bit colder.
The major excitement came when a family of ducklings got caught in the chaos of the rushing water. Screaming with urgency, the schoolkids raced to the side to supervise as the birds bobbed around and their panicked mother left them to their fate and headed for the sanctuary of the bank where she paced and quacked madly. I’m happy to say they all made it through the experience and swiftly headed off to calmer waters.
Luckily there was plenty more to take my mind off the fact that I had lost all feeling in my toes around the time we entered the third lock. There were bridges and trains, buses and sirens screaming past in that way Paris has of making everything seem urgent. There was the clanging close of the gates behind us and the water rushing in to lift us up, there were people bringing their children to watch the boat rise up in the flooding waters of the locks, and there was the life going on along the sides of the canal. Shops and cafes, a tiny mechanics yard with a man drinking coffee in a chair outside while a vintage Porsche awaited his attention inside, men with huge shoulders working out on series of outdoor gym equipment, boys playing table tennis on a permanent concrete table, and lots of lovely footbridges dating from the second half of the nineteenth century. I especially liked the swinging bridge – a road bridge which literally pivots to swing out of the way of the canal boats – and the rising bridge – which just goes up to get out of way, the only rising bridge in Paris.
Finally, we emerged into the wide, ex-docks and warehouse area of Bassin de la Villette. And the sunshine. Warmth. Lovely. Our two and a half hour voyage had taken us from historical, central Paris to the newly developed, spacious Parc de la Villette which around ten million people a year visit – both Parisians and tourists – for its gardens, science and industry exhibits and omnimax domed theatre. Its modernity was quite a contrast to where we’d just traveled and I felt quite the adventurer as I walked through on my way to the metro station.
By the time I headed underground I could feel my toes again. But I am still no wiser as to what lurks beneath the surface of the Seine. Which is probably a good thing.
