Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Joy of Cycling in Paris - An Homage to Vélib...



Vélib is a merge of the French words for bike – Vélo and freedom - liberté .  And it truly is freedom on your bike

And  I can tell this because I recently enjoyed a week in Paris, a wonderful romantic week – for one!   

It was meant to be a romantic week for two, but Romeo H. could not come.  So I ended up travelling to Paris alone.  And it could not have been better!   Paris looked beautiful, the weather obliged and I almost never got off my bike!



Or, to be more precise, I never got off one of the 17,000 bikes that one can pick up from any of the 1,230 depots around the city of Paris.  This thanks to Mon. Jean –Claude Decaux whose advertising company has funded the purchase and maintenance of the Vélib bikes since the program started there in 2007.     

 

- Will somebody please give Mon. Decaux  a nice big French ´embrace´ for me!  Or one better, a nice bowl of lovely fish stew, like the one I ate in a small restaurant I discovered out cycling. 





























Bike pickups /drop offs are now available in several cities around the world.  And they really are a great way to get around.  Frankly in suitable weather there is no better way to get around a bike friendly safe city anywhere in the world.













































































For bike people this is simply a no brainer; this system has all the pluses and none of the minuses of cycling in a big city; there are no issues with bringing your own bike with you on holiday, or of carrying your bike up and down steps, or on and off the subway.   






































































....And most of all no worries about your bike getting stolen; you simply pick up a bike at a pick up point near you, cycle to where every  you want to go and leave you bike at the drop off point there.  And for non-bike people Paris could be a good place to fall in love… with cyling!
























































 













































In homage to Paris on my Vélib I am showing photos from two of my favorite days Vélib-ing around Paris.  As this will make for lots of words and lots of photos I will divide the blog posting into two parts.  See how many locations you know.  On the next blog posting, I will give more details on places shown in the photos









And the next day.....








































Full disclousure:  I did not stop and go into these buildings when I was cyling by.  I took the pictures of the interiors of these buildings on days it was too wet to enjoy cycling.























And for something completely different......





































And then I dropped off my Vélib and took a train ......



                                                  




So after another long day on my Vélib.  Heading home to bed.