Our Guide to Paris

David and I stayed in a shabby hotel in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Paris. Our narrow little street, the Rue de Gay-Lusac, was lined with tall, old buildings in which the ground floors were small shops with dusty windows and faded signs. 

David, watching from the window of our fourth floor room,  called to me, “There’s a library across the street.”  

In Paris a “library” is different from the public libraries we have in the U.S.  It does not lend books.  It is a shop that sells newspapers, cigarettes, lottery and metro tickets.  On our first day in Paris I went into a library to buy a city map.      

The Paris map outlined in bright colors the Grand Boulevards. In between were blotches of green, indicating parks, surrounded by pale lines showing every little street and alley.  Symbols marked the major “points of interest.”  In one corner was a smaller map of metro lines spreading out like a doily pattern from the center of the city. 

I appointed David as our “navigator”.  My 13-year-old got a kick out using the map to devise routes for our daily excursions.  When we used the Metro, he figured out how we were to change trains.  He used the electronic map in the central “station” to memorize the names and number of all the stops before we reached our destination. 

Sometimes he found a more direct route using city buses.  Or we simply walked to nearby “points of interest.”  The Rue de Gay-Lusac was just off the Boulevard St. Germaine, with a 20 minute walk down to the bridge across the Seine River to Notre Dame Cathedral. 

With that map, and David to guide me, we never lost our way. . . and were able to help the hapless American tourist who stopped us on the street and asked frantically, “Do you speak English?”