The way to go Easy

We dined with a new friend, Ann, who is a musicologist and medievalist, last night.  She lives in the 12th, on the east side of the Right Bank, and we are in the 15th, the west side of the Left Bank, so we met in the middle, at an Italian restaurant in the 5th, near the Panthéon and the church of St. Etienne du Mont.

Somewhere in the dinner conversation I was asked if I knew how many hits my blog receives.  There are statistics available, but I rarely look at them.  Today I did take a peek, and I was surprised to learn that the most popular blog entry I have made in the five years that I've used Blogspot for this journal was on August 24, 2016, "Hot and Flawless."

Sounds like porn, but it is not.  The first half of that entry is a sample of my science writing, and the other part is a review of a dinner at l'Alchimie, a favorite restaurant that disappeared last year.

The place in the 5th arrondissement where our
friend Roniece likes to enjoy her "chardy"
(glass of chardonnay) at Happy Hour.

When I was employed as a science writer on government-funded environmental projects, I could not use the informal style that I now use to explain complicated subjects to non-techie people.  Now I can use an informal, story-telling style, and I enjoy doing so.  You can see that in the August 24, 2016, entry.

The most popular entry of the past week was "The heat and the homeless."  I salute you all for caring about your fellow humans!  Thank you.

The hot weather was part of the story in each of those two blog posts.  The extreme heat kept me from exercising for two days this week, which is a calamity in my psyche.  I made up for some of the exercise deprivation yesterday.  Combining the long walk in the morning with our walk home from dinner equals 10 miles, twice my daily goal.  That's not bad for someone with a deteriorating knee and arthritic feet.

If you are so inclined, use the comment section below or Facebook messaging to let me know what you DO like to read about in this blog.

We used the metro to go to dinner last night, so we finally bought our two Navigo Easy passes.  This new Navigo Easy system will eliminate the paper tickets for the metro, perhaps by the end of next year.  I showed the passes to Ann last night.  She'd not heard about them yet.  Because she is a year-round Parisian, she has a regular Navigo year-long pass, which is a sturdy-looking photo ID.

Navigo Easy is for people on short stays, but it is not the same as Navigo Discovery and Navigo travel passes.  The Navigo Easy passes can be recharged at the ticket windows or on the Navigo machines in the metro stations.  My guess is that eventually, Navigo Easy might replace Navigo Discovery and Navigo travel passes.  The travel passes expire in a week or a month; so Navigo Easy is better for people like us, who are in Paris for a few months, but who only use the metro occasionally.

Each Navigo Easy pass costs two euros, plus we asked the ticket agent to load each card with a "carnet" of ten tickets.  That brought the total to 16.90 euros per Navigo Easy pass.  There does not seem to be an Easy way to see how many tickets remain on the Navigo Easy pass, so we will have to keep count.  The ticket agent suggested re-charging the cards before they are empty, so we don't have the embarrassment of trying to use a card that is depleted.

In addition to regular urban-zone metro and bus tickets, you may also load RER tickets (for trips to the airport, etc.) on the Navigo Easy pass.  No more paper tickets!  Less waste.  And a shiny new card in our wallets.  The Navigo Easy pass will theoretically last for 10 years.

So in addition to having new library cards in Paris, we also have new subway passes!  We are tickled pink about this.

We had walked almost all the way home last night when we finally decided that it was just too late and we'd walked far enough.  So we took the metro from Duroc, near the famous Necker Hospital, to Avenue Emile Zola.  The metro was nearly empty.  When we'd taken the same line in the pre-dinner hour, the cars were hot and crowded.  We made a mental note to avoid rush hours on the metro.

Here are some scenes from our visit to the 5th arrondissement:

These first five photos are of the ornate façade of the St. Etienne du Mont church.

The Panthéon, as seen from the plaza in front of St. Etienne du Mont.

A remnant of the Philippe Augustus wall around old Paris, dating to the 12th C.