Canal St Martin

I mentioned a few posts back that the reflections in the Liffey remind me of the Canal St Martin.
Well, this is a busy week, made busier by an unexpected visit to the dentist (a check-up was on my to-do list for February, I would have preferred NOT to have chipped a tooth over the weekend. However I was lucky enough to get a cancellation for 4 this afternoon - ideal for C to pick me up after work).
So I've picked out a few photos showing the canal in Paris. It's hard to believe that just the day before most of these photos were taken, it rained, and rained, and rained. We went to the Music Museum, which was a long ride out on the underground  - perfect for filling in a rainy day. The  museum is located at the Cité des Sciences, by the Bassin de la Villette, getting off the Metro at Stalingrad. The next day we joined the canal  at the point where Le Bassin de La Villette becomes the canal, and had a lovely walk down to the point where it disappears underground for a short while, near the Place de la République. It's the underground part that would put me off taking one of the tourist boat trips down it - it must surely be claustrophobic. These photos were taken in December 2007.

 

 

 

It comes out again at the Place de la Bastille, where it's just a few hundred metres down to the Seine. The photos of that stretch were taken on a later visit, when we accidentally came across the marina, and went back to it later on in the evening.

 

Just beyond this little footbridge is where the canal joins the Seine. It was starting to get a bit dark by this stage, and there was a security guard patrolling with a rather fierce looking Alsatian, but he told us it was fine to walk right down as far as the river. The walls up the side of the path along the river were still radiating warmth from the heat of the day. (More luck with the weather - this was March 2009, but so warm that sandals and a skirt would have been adequate a lot of the time.)

You can read a bit about the canal HERE. It's very different from the hustle and bustle of central Paris, and we'd certainly walk along it again. The canal features in the film Hotel du Nord, and also in Amélie.