Sundays in Paris

If you take the songs "Sunday in New York" and "April in Paris", put them in a blender and listen to the result, you will get the calm, bitter-sweet feeling of a Sunday in Paris. Yes, center ville is swarming with tourists and the museums as busy as ever, but the neighborhoods are quiet and at rest.

Although there is a growing push to have things open on Sunday, and the larger stores such as Leclerc are now opened half a day, most everything else is closed. Less buses run on this day and there are less cars, except for the popular places where Parisians take their kids to play: the Jardin de Acclimatacion, the pond at the Tuileries, many of the spots in the Bois de Boulogne, the Luxembourg park, and the Jardin des Plants.

But, if you drive, or better yet, walk through residential areas such as the Sixteenth Arrondissement or Neuilly where the wealthy live, and even working class or middle class neighborhoods such as Puteaux or our own Suresnes, the tree-lined streets and otherwise busy boulevards are as quiet as, well, a church.

Sundays are days when we are better off taking the Metro rather than a bus if we want to go into Paris--unless you like sitting at a bus stop for 30 or 40 minutes watching other people go by in their cars.

Yet, there are those of us who think that doing just that, sitting at a bus stop, is more fun than the proverbial barrel of monkeys.

On a certain Sunday, we decided to go to the Sevres Ceramics Museum. Now, you must not misunderstand me: I like looking at the stuff that decorated the houses of the rich and famous a couple of centuries ago; and I think I admire the fine workmanship of the china on which royalty ate 10 course dinners, but I don't consider it as exciting as say, the Rubens Room at the Louvre or suddenly coming upon an astonishing Van Gogh in the d'Orsay Museum.

Yet, I dutifully agreed to go; after all, the trip would be easy: we just had to go up to the Tram station and take the T2 which in a few minutes would put us at a stop just across the road from the Sevres Museum. Trams are a wonderful mode of transportation. They are relatively quiet, clean, and their large windows afford an unobstructed view of the places you pass, although some of those places are not that scenic. They are becoming the transportation of choice in many French cities where, coupled with car parks, one can avoid the hassle of having to drive into the center of a city, and the exasperation of looking for a parking space.

Paris has been building its Tram lines for several years and the idea is to girdle the city with them so that if you want to travel, say from the west to the south (for example, from Suresnes to Orly Airport) you can do this with a combination of Tram and RER train without having to go into the city itself.

"So, shall we take the Tram to Sevres?" I asked hopefully.

"Is there no bus that goes there?" asked my wife.

"Yes, but it is a Sunday. They run few and far between."

"I hate going up that steep hill to the Tram station."

"Its not that bad and it is far better than spending nearly an hour waiting for a bus."

She relented grudgingly and off we went up the hill the the T2 Belvedere terminal.

The Tram came and whisked us off to our destination in quiet, air-conditioned comfort. We got off, crossed the avenue and soon we were strolling in the halls of the museum looking at ceramic satyrs chasing ceramic nymphs with very real lust in their ceramic faces. There were hundreds of examples of beautiful china and even vases that had music and parts that moved like a carousel.

"Well, that was very interesting," I said in smug satisfaction. "Now all we have to do is cross the road and take the Tram back home."

My wife said nothing but her silence was eloquent.

When we got to the Tram station we found it crowded with people that were leaving the Saint Cloud park, which is also near-by. There were kids with bikes and mothers with strollers, men in suits that were getting off work at the various museums and venues, and giggly girls in too short shorts; in fact, it was so crowded there was barely room for us to stand in.

But, there was something wrong. The doors did not close. The Tram did not move. After nearly a half hour of this, midst the loud conversations, the screaming and crying of children who were hot and hungry, and the desperate whistling of some men, came the announcement: because of problems in the line, the Tram would not leave the station for another two hours.

Suddenly, there was a mad scramble. People vacated the Tram like roaches fleeing a bread basket on fire.

"What the hell..." I managed to say as we were swept off the Tram by a tsunami of sweaty bodies and rushing strollers. People stopped taxis, others ran to the Saint Cloud bus station, yet others braved the busy Rue de Saint Cloud to get to the bus stop on the other side.

We did the same. And, after an hour we were rewarded with a number 144 bus that, although filled to capacity with the fleeing ex-Tram travelers, delivered us just a couple of blocks away from home.

"Thank God for buses," said my wife.

"Yes," I responded meekly.