Paris has yet another amazing thing it is doing for the folks that live here ( sometimes it gets a little daunting how many perks the city offers to the residents)... there are now free bikes all across town... 10, 000 of them at the moment, with 20,000 projected by the end of the year. They're not totally free. You have to take a year's 'subscription' for 30 euros, but then every ride under a half hour is free and it's about one euro an hour after that.
Here is Lisa showing off her ability to ride through the 2nd busiest intersection in the city (Place de la Concorde) in high heels.
The city isn't completely a bunch of trusting fools handing out bikes to all and sundry. You have to register your credit card and there is a fine if you damage or lose the bike... but they're very sturdy little things and it would be hard to do much damage to them.
We rode all over the city on a beautiful, but chilly Saturday and then down onto the Quai of the Seine and over to the left bank.
The only flaw in the system is that we picked up the bikes on the edges of the city and tried to drop them off in the centre, but we weren't the only ones with the same idea, so all the drop off points were already full. But, cycling around Paris for 15 minutes looking for a space on a calm afternoon is not exactly the worst thing in the world, and eventually we found a space near St. Sulpice and clicked them and headed into the pedestrian throng...
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