Cycling in Paris made the City a lot Smaller – Hans on the Bike

Reading Time: 9 minutes

We finally did it. We cycled in Paris.

I think I have been to Paris five times over the last five decades and every time it feels overwhelming. Two million people live inside the Périphérique, an area with a diameter of only about 10-11 km. That’s about twice the population of Nova Scotia. Fifty million visitors flock to Paris every year, 50% from abroad. The Louvre alone attracts 30,000 visitors per opening day. (as a comparison, the National Gallery in Ottawa attracts around a 1000 a day)

The last two years, we stopped briefly in Paris because we now fly back from Paris to Ottawa, rather than from Amsterdam, thanks to the new direct Air France connection since 2023, avoiding Montreal. What a pleasure to arrive at 2:45 pm and be home already at 4 pm (although the luggage handling is very slow and last year, we had to change gates because it didn’t open: everybody back in their seats and safety belts on again) instead of 9 pm after hanging around at the airport in Montreal waiting for the KLM bus to bring us to Ottawa. I know, first world problems.

Tourism in Paris is beyond imagination. Every tour boat on the Seine has hundreds of people on it, the square in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral had a few thousand tourists on a sunny Sunday morning in May and it wasn’t even 10 am. We could barely find walking space at the book stalls along the Seine. Suffice to say, we avoided the core area as much as we could.

Last year we admired the omnipresent improved cycling infrastructure. Before that, we were last in Paris in 2009, two years after their bike share was introduced. We had wanted to try the bike share system last year, but in the end we didn’t bother; we enjoy strolling in Paris just as much. There is just so much to see when you walk. From pocket parks to impressive 19th century front doors, quirky details on buildings, side walk patios and of course, the many monumental buildings.

This year, we promised ourselves, we will bike. We looked again into the Velib bike share system but instead we decided to just rent bikes for a day. Why bother searching for bike stations all the time when you can get a bike for a whole day for 18 Euros? 

So I pulled out our IPad and searched for bike rentals and eventually settled on Rent a Bike Paris, off Blvd. Sébastopol in Rue Greneta, a twenty minute walk from Notre Dame cathedral or a short walk from metro stop Réaumur-Sebastopol.

There are several bike rentals but some tend to be aggregators, to which the local bike shop pays a percentage for marketing their company. I prefer to deal directly with local companies so I settled on Rent a Bike. We had not booked on line and just dropped in. Except, there wasn’t much to drop in because interestingly, the business is run from a handful of bike racks on the street, a toolbox, a front door and a cell phone. Smart, because renting space can’t be cheap in Paris.

Blvd. Sébastopol

On our upright seven gear internal hub bikes with back pedal brake and mandatory handbrake, we set out on Blvd. Sébastopol northbound on a separate bidirectional lane. We enjoyed the busy bike traffic, but I can imagine for some people it is somewhat overwhelming. 

After just over one kilometer already, we turned north west on a narrow bike track and soon turned west again, heading towards Montmartre to get a glimpse of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, via a narrow street, Rue de Steinkerque. There was road construction going on, but the road has a wide pedestrianised median where we were rerouted onto. From our vantage point, we could see the stairs in front of the church on Montmartre were packed. 

Canal St. Martin

We turned around and then it was off to Canal St. Martin. I had never been there before and until a few months ago, somewhat surprisingly, had never heard of it. It was built in the early 1800’s to supply fresh water to the city and for shipping. In the 1960’s it was nearly filled in to accommodate a four lane highway. Luckily for us, City Hall came to its senses in the early ‘70’s and the canal remained untouched.

Our route ran across the railway tracks on Blvd. de la Chapelle near Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est. I never knew the two stations were only two hundred meters apart. The things you learn when cycling. The bike route towards the canal was not great, passing messy places, with broken glass in the lanes. I prayed we wouldn’t have a flat tire. We noticed dozens of tents with people living underneath the elevated metro line. A sad view, out of sight of mass tourism and Instagram.

At some point we heard an ambulance coming behind us. The driver used the bike track to pass the row of cars so we made sure we were out of the way. Some cycling advocates have pointed out that bike tracks could actually double as emergency lanes, which we experienced first hand.

Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad

At Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad we turned south again, on the west side of the canal initially. When we were biking in a fairly narrow track on the east side eventually and cyclists biked towards us, we had this gut feeling we were cycling in the wrong track, and indeed we were supposed to bike at the other side of the canal again. It is one of those situations we encountered several times, when it is not entirely clear where to bike. On the flip side, it is the type of mistake you only make once, because of the unknown territory.

The canal eventually disappears underground and the surface becomes a lineair park until Place de la Bastille. Upon closer inspection, the canal is still there, but covered. Place de la Bastille had beautiful broad bidirectional cycling infrastructure. South of the Place we continued towards the Seine. There we were caught up again in a bit of a confusion intersection, but car traffic is so light, it was easy to get back on track.

Cycling in Paris along the Seine

The route dips down along the Seine and all of a sudden we found ourselves cycling on the famous road, now Voie Georges Pompidou, that Paris closed off for cars and turned into a waterfront space for pedestrians, roller bladers, cycling, wheel chair users. What a transformation. I am only leaving one image here, but the experience is great. Look on Google Streetview for more impressions. It is the type of space the NCC visualized but whose ideas were viciously attacked by our mayor. The artwork (in the picture below) pays tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Pont Neuf Wrapped, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025.

We veered away from the Seine and stopped at the Tuileries behind the Louvre and under a dense and lush tree canopy, we enjoyed water and some food we brought with us. It was a very hot day with temperatures soaring to 32C/90F: we really appreciated the shade whenever we stopped. Luckily the humidity was low at around 31%. It is amazing that in a city with such high density, there is still quite some greenspace. Last year, we made a point of visiting several parks we had not seen before.

After a well deserved rest, we made our way out of the park at the west end, crossed the Place de la Concorde and followed a wide boulevard for a few hundred meters and ended up at yet another enormous intersection. Only back home, I noticed that this was the east end of the Champs-Élysées, which doesn’t look at all like the Champs-Élysées I have been in the past with all its high end stores. Imagine, cycling on the Champs-Élysées and not even realizing it until a week later back home. 

Eiffel Tower

The sun was getting pretty brutal now at the beginning of the afternoon, but we felt we should not go back before we had passed the Eiffel Tower. We cycled by the Grand Palais, with its magnificent glass roof and the Petit Palais and the Hôtel des Invalides (hot tip, not only can you see Napoleon’s tomb there, there is also a cute museum in the attic with maquettes (scale models) of several towns and fortifications in France including the awesome scale model of Mont St.-Michel. Some of the models were built in the 1600-1700’s.

While admiring the Eiffel Tower, a large musical parade marched by. It somehow made me travel back in time to New Orleans, with lots of drums and copper instruments. It turned out to be the Congo based church Dialungana Kiangani, celebrating an important event. We asked the Presse person (above in the picture) what was going on and it turned out May 25 is Christmas Day for the followers of this church because it’s the birthday of Papa Salomon Dialungana Kiangani: followers from several countries were here to celebrate his birthday.

After this uplifting music, we found our way back along the Seine’s left bank, passing Musée d’Orsay on the fly, and dropped off our bikes and noticed we cycled no less than 25 kilometers in Paris without realizing.  Two blocks up the road from the bike rental place, we stopped at a side walk ‘patio’ at a very French looking brasserie on a quiet side street. Over iced coffee and cold beer, we looked back and found that by bike, Paris became so much smaller. Distances are all of a sudden so much more doable inside the Périférique when you take a bike. I admit we had feared the idea of cycling in Paris, hence we kept postponing. But what were we thinking? Between the two of us we have 100 years of cycling experience.

We somewhat designed our route on the fly while we were cycling, based on available separate cycling infrastructure on Google and a rough idea of my spatial knowledge of Paris by now. It is pretty impressive how much bike infrastructure they created in the France’s capital. In Ottawa, the excuse is often that we lack space but Paris, with a far higher density compared to our space inside the Greenbelt, somehow has space to accommodate cycling traffic. Of course, it is not a matter of lack of space, it is political will and fear for voter backlash from residents. Ottawa’s elections are won in the suburbs. And many suburban voters want to drive and park downtown. I guess Paris is able to make more autonomous decisions, not influenced by some remote provincial leader, who woke up one morning and decided he’d undermine road safety against all data. Note to self: populist leaders don’t worry about data. /rant

We also noticed that Paris appears to have built infrastructure that connects (disclaimer, I did not research every inch of cycling infra). Rather than spending five years humming and hawing and finally build 80 meters of perfect and awesome bike infrastructure at a cost of several million dollars, they paved and separated wherever there was space and if there wasn’t space, they just took a car lane away from what we observed. Connected infrastructure appears to have been number one on the list in Paris. Quality a bit lower. I think for example that Ottawa’s protected intersections are much nicer, clearer and functional. I don’t even recall seeing protected intersections in Paris. 

We had not expected cycling would’ve been so easy in Paris. We had expected more conflict points with motorized traffic. But it all went pretty smooth: there weren’t many cars to begin with. I should add though we biked on Whit Sunday, so that may have made the city quieter.

Given the cost, I don’t think we’ll spent much time in Paris in the coming years; hopefully we can squeeze in a day here and there though. But we have no fear for cycling in Paris anymore. And if Paris still sounds too daunting to you, there is always Bordeaux to practise first.

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