06 El Norte...to Paris

The next morning, I had to go to Aix en Provence to catch a train north to Paris but didn't expect the snow storm  that swept most of France. We had a 100 km drive downhill winding roads before reaching the autoroute. This is what the road looked like...

Some villages had snow plows, others didn't

Gotta admit, after a little spinning encounter with some black ice, and a mountain cliff impact that stopped us, I was becoming a little stressed.

By now I'm not liking white

Frozen ice 

Ubaye River is almost 83km long sourced from a little lake 

Lake

Thought for sure I'd miss the train 

The Colonel and his wife got me to the station on time

TGV was a smooth ride north

It started out a wet taxi ride from the Gare de Lyon 

The snow came fast

The taxi driver said I'd be his last fare for the evening, Parisians are not equipped for this kind of weather. I am now in Saint Ouen at Marisa's and this is the city view from my window the next morning...

This incinerator stack is steam vapor transformed from burning garbage and piping the hot steam to heat up all the city owned building radiators (including the one Marisa is living in) - impressive concept.

Saint Ouen used to be the northern industrial area of Paris with the Citroen auto factories, until new city boundaries (the circular expressway) put it over on the other side, in a county called Seine Saint Denis. St. Ouen became an interesting social development. The brick building in the lower right corner of the photo used to be the Banque de France but it was purchased by the French communist party and transformed into a Socio-cultural building for the poor, to make a point no doubt. The famous Flea Market is just around the corner. Since St.Ouen is one of the important axis through which traveler's into the capital city came, the poor and the homeless would sit by the road and sell whatever they could to the people.