Hiking in France - Day 1 (Paris)

July 1st, 2006

My wife and I recently completed a two-week backpacking trip through southern France, following the GR4 trail from Manosque to Castellane. It was a great test of our hiking abilities, my half-remembered high school French, and Kayla's capacity to leave the kids for so long!

The photography for this trip was much better than past excursions thanks to our new digital camera, which actually lasted on one set of batteries the entire vacation. We're not heavy camera users but we did return with some good shots of the Verdon Gorges and the villages we passed through.

We arrived at eleven in the morning on an overcast and humid Paris day, not too much worse for the wear after an excellent trans-Atlantic flight where we each had a video console to ourselves and a great selection of time-consuming films (thank you KLM and Northwest). Paris was, well, Paris, and incidentally the cleanest metropolis I've ever visited, thanks to the ubiquitous public toilet "capsules" and an apparently efficient garbage system. Sure beats NYC!

We stayed at the Young and Happy Hostel, which could be more accurately described as the Cramped and Crabby Hostel (you can read the reviews of this gem here). However, it was close to most everything in the city center, so we ended up walking a lot rather than taking transport. The metro system was excellent, however--getting to the Eiffel Tower was fast and easy. I wish North Idaho had a subway.

Our favorite hang-out spot was under the trees at Notre Dame Cathedral. Most of our time was spent transacting business, though: buying gas canisters at Decathlon sporting goods store and searching for good hiking guides. The latter were surprisingly difficult to obtain. In fact I was generally disappointed with the book scene in a city that spawned the first Western university. The renowned FNAC chain failed to deliver even one of the FFRP guides that I needed to plan our route.

Kayla's journal from the day records:

Well here we are finally in our first hostel in Paris. Yesterday and today all blend together into one because of the time zone change (nine hours ahead) and only a two-hour "nap" for sleep Sunday night. We've had about three hours of walking around Paris this afternoon--shopping at Decathlon--and one hour this evening. We visited the Notre Dame cathedral grounds and had a nice time together relaxing under the trees. There are so many people here and so many pedestrians--everyone's out it seems. We've had gorgeous weather today (even a bit muggy) and warm. Glad I didn't bring my extra long sleeves. Though my pack already feels heavy and I didn't have my water filled up today. We leave for Marseilles tomorrow afternoon on the TGV.