From Paris to Evry, first day on the bikes
I'm thankful, again, that I decided to ditch the folding bikes, and rent bikes here. These bikes are smooth and efficient, and make riding easy. Our first day involved me getting used to the navigation app again. I'm using OMSAnd, which is very full-featured, but not necessarily easy to use. Also, since the bike path is not marked (pretty much at all), I have to take out my phone all the time, to figure out where to go. In general, though, the GPX file that I'm following is pretty good, and routes us well, with just a few execptions.
The first part of the ride, through the southern edge of Paris, was pretty isolated and industrial. Lots of graffiti, lots of litter. Not very prosperous looking area.
Then we got to some nicer looking spots. We had lunch in a park called Ile de Loisirs du Port aux Cerises.
Beautiful spot. There was also an amusement park in the park that we biked past, which had a group of Hasidic school kids. I only really noticed that it was a hasidic group when I saw that all the girls were wearing skirts. Not that wearing skirts is uncommon, but for ALL the girls to be wearing skits isn't common. Then I saw some of the teachers, who were wearing wigs, and also saw that there was a police car there.
We crossed the Seine 3 times, once having to carry our bikes up steps.
There were very light showers quite a bit of the time, and then one very heavy rain, where we took cover under a tree.
The town we ended up in, Evry, is very non-French, in the sense that about 90% of the people you see are either African or middle eastern. Also the restaurants here were very basic - just kebab places, and burgers. We ended up not in a hotel, but in an apartment, that I found on Booking.com. We walked up to the main part of town to get some food, and were so unimpressed by the selection of restaurants that we decided to just buy some food and make it at the apartment.
I finally got over jet lag - woke up once around 2 but was able to get to sleep again. So, hopefully we're good in that regard.
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