Paris Encore 2022 Some Washing and Some Walking

It was laundry day for us, so we loaded everything into one of our empty suitcases and wheeled it the few blocks to the laundromat. We’re on the 8th floor in our building, but in France it’s called the 7th floor. The first floor is “0”. Our building has tiny elevators, thank goodness, carefully fitted into the stairwells of the 1910 building. The button for the first floor is marked RC, which stands for rée de chaussée. It’s the roadway, or street level. I’m sure my high school French teacher said it had to do with where the horse-drawn carriages pulled up.

We noticed wonderful mosaic tiles on the floor of level “0”, but could it be mosaics of fleas? Our neighborhood mascot, perhaps? Remember our street name, Picpus? Scratching at flea bites? Anyway, they’re very tastefully done.

We arrived at the laundromat with some trepidation, knowing that this would be a very foreign and mysterious place to us, with directions that we wouldn’t understand. There was no attendant in sight, but there was a gentleman washing what appeared to be commercial-sized quantities of towels. He helped us figure out how to select a machine, then go to the central payment station and pay, then go back and start the machine. Whew! All is well, and washing is underway.

Some patrons load up the washers, then step out for un café, and know just when to come back. We don’t dare leave, unsure of the protocol. There are about 20 washers, but only 8 giant dryers. One young woman has filled four of the dryers with her laundry, leading one of the other patrons, an older gentleman, to meet my eyes, and roll his own, in exasperation. I shrug my shoulders. What if there are no dryers for us? Our concern was needless, because she was done by the time we needed them. Catastrophe avoided.

After about an hour, we were ready to take our clean, and almost dry, laundry back to our apartment. We had the last of our roti chicken for lunch, and swore never to buy a whole chicken at the market again. Since we don’t have a real kitchen here, leftovers are nearly the same thing over-and-over. 

We decided to spend some time walking on the lovely Promenade Plantée, now called La Coulée Verte René-Dumont. It’s a three-mile partly elevated train line that was repurposed into a garden walk. I had been there in 2006, and was anxious to revisit it. Rick discovered that the park intersected our Boulevard Picpus about a mile from our apartment, so we headed out to find it. 

Through an old tunnel in the park. There are sculptures here and there, and a fountain on each side, formed with boulders.

The elevated part of the park is quite nice. Beautiful flower beds, sculptures, pools, arbors. It’s a nice place to sit and relax, and we saw plenty of people doing just that.

Notice the sculptures around the top floor of this building along the promenade.

We wandered back through the streets to our place. Dinner was at a local restaurant. The dinner was good, but the desserts were even better. Crème Brûlée for Rick and Mille Feuille for me. The waiter helped me with my pronunciation. It’s mee fouya.