Wednesday was a no school day, as it is every week, and therefore a day when I needed to plan something to do with the kids. Sapphire wanted to play with Blanche at least some of the day, but she was happy to do something with us as well. I wanted to do at least a little housework, and of course there was dinner to plan and shop for.
Both Sapphire and Ezio had been complaining that they didn't have anything to read, so a trip to the library seemed like a natural fit. We planned to leave right after lunch. Of course, Blanche rang our doorbell just as we were sitting down to eat, and so I agreed that Sapphire could go play for an hour before we headed to the library. At the agreed time, I stopped by Blanche's apartment to pick up Sapphire and we headed out to the library.
The forecast on Wednesday was for rain all day, and so we brought our umbrellas with us even though it wasn't raining when we left our apartment. By the time we got off the train at Alma-Marceau it was raining quite hard, and so we were glad to have them. Sapphire and Ezio wanted very much to spin their umbrellas around, spraying the water off of the umbrellas and into the faces of the hapless passersby. Eventually I told them that if they continued to spin the umbrellas that I would take them away and they would have to get wet. That helped. Sort of. When we were most of the way to the library, Cherry tumbled headlong crossing the street and scraped both knees. She also snapped two of the ribs on her umbrella, rendering it useless. Since it was still pouring, I picked her up to keep her dry under my umbrella, and vowed that if it was still raining when we left we would take the longer but drier route home.
We arrived at the library, unfortunately, just in time for storytime (I know, I know, we could have gone to storytime, but it lasts for an hour, which would have meant dealing with much heavier traffic on the train coming home). So we snuck around the children's room picking books and trying not to disturb anyone.
It was still raining when we left the library, so I decided that we would take the drier route home. (A bit of an aside: There are two RER lines, the A and the E, that go through our local RER station. Typically when we go to the library, we take whichever of the two lines has the next available train into Paris, and then switch to the metro line 9, which we ride to Alma-Marceau, and then walk the half mile or so to the library. There is a closer stop, Pont d'Alma, which is directly across the river from our normal stop. Unfortunately, getting there requires 2 transfers, which means it takes a bit longer. Usually we decide that walking the extra quarter kilometer outside is worth it.)
We got to our RER station (not a metro this time) and headed down to wait for the RER C to pick us up. As we were riding the train, it occurred to me that we had taken the RER E going to the library, and that our current route back involved taking the RER C to the RER B to the RER A. That meant that the only one of the RER lines that we wouldn't be taking that day was the D. Now, there are very few stations outside of Paris proper that are served by more than one RER line (in fact, ours may be the only one), but there are lots of stations in Paris that are served by two, or even three, lines. Perhaps there was a way to add a leg on the D line without going out of our way? We got off the C line and headed down to the B, getting there just in time to see our train pull away. That meant we had 5 minutes, plenty of time to locate a transport map, and determine that if we transferred from the B to the D (instead of to the A) at Chatelet, we could then transfer from the D to the A at Gare de Lyon, thereby riding all 5 RER lines in a single day, and without even going out of our way, since the A and D run together between Chatelet and Gare de Lyon.
Observations: The C line is very nice, and at least through the middle of the city very uncrowded. The B line was sardine-like. I'm glad we weren't trying to ride during rush hour. Fortunately we were only going one stop. The D was moderately busy (we were able to get seats together), but has rotten info signs. I'm fairly certain that we missed a train that we could have taken because it wasn't clear whether or not the train was taking passengers.
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