Finally, after however many months of friggin' bitter cold and gloom, spring is in full boom in Paris! The steps of the Grand Arche are swarming with suits again, restaurants are setting up outdoor seating again, and the trees have green things growing out of them again. Seriously, it's been a long cold winter!

I went for a quick burn on the bike during lunch to suss out a new route around La Défense to work. I never really realised how big this place actually is! In a nutshell it covers an area of 78 acres, contains around 70 glass-and-steel buildings including 14 high-rises above 150 metres, has 180,000 daily workers (including me) and 3.5 million square metres of office space making La Défense Europe's largest purpose-built business district. I just found out it sits at the westernmost end of what's known as the Historical Axis, a ten-kilometre line of monuments, buildings and thoroughfares starting at the Louvre in Central Paris, continuing along the Champs-Élysées, and beyond the Arc de Triomphe before culminating at La Défense which incidentally is my exact route to and from work on the bike :)

A couple months back we went to a gig featuring my workmate's band. That was a competition involving eight groups of various genres, and audience voting to determine whether a group made it through to the next round of the competition. My mate's group was one of those voted through, so here we are for round two. Incidentally the kids from last time were back again - that's them on the right hehe.

This dude, has a nice (cherry-red) guitar!

My mate's band is called ERESIS - a "progressive metal" group. That MySpace link above features a few of their tracks. It's not my cup of tea but it's good to watch :)

30-minute set over, audience voting taken, and at the end of the night we found out they'd made third place (of eight) which sees them through to another round.

Next group up had this chick on vocals who'd definitely had a drink or two beforehand. They came second and I'm pretty sure she was the reason why hehe.

And this dude with the big camera really got excited when the guitarist up there removed his shirt.

I'm pretty sure this guy wasn't drunk - just having a really, really good night hehe. ROCK AND ROLL!

Look at that - spring in Paris! Not a bad view to wake up to every morning :)

Kristina's mom (that's American for "mum" ;) landed in Paris last night all the way from Texas and is here for a week or so. This is her first time in France, and among the several touristy things Kristina has planned for her I suggested we all do a ride that I did a couple years ago - a 28km route from Paris down to Versailles. From memory it was fairly flat and unchallenging - perfect! I had my beast, we hired a couple bikes from near the Eiffel Tower, and hit the spring-filled Parisian streets!

The first part of the route follows the Seine for a ways southwest of the Tower before heading into 460-hectare Parc de Saint-Cloud.

It's really nice in here, but has a lot more hills than I remember! The girls had been enjoying themselves up to this point ;)

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

Three weeks ago there would've been no green in sight - I hate winter with a passion!

Looking back east towards central Paris.

After several ball-busting hills that I have no recollection of, we hit suburbia for a bit.

After several more ball-busting hills that I have no recollection of, we hit Forêt Domaniale de Fausses Reposes for a bit - another great chunk of green and much loved by small dogs and by Americans ;)

After four hours and what turned out to be a much more challenging route than I remember it being (sorry Mom), we finally reached Versailles.

We raided the food market and headed to the Grand Parc in the Gardens of Versailles for a picnic (us and everyone else).

Palace of Versailles in the distance. Doesn't seem like that long ago I brought my own Mum here :)

Kristina choked on an olive so I employed my own variation of the Heimlich Maneuver which did the trick ;) Well not really. Some chick was doing this with her daughter beside us, and Kristina thought it sure looked like fun.

And with that we left...

...and I left them at the Palace to do their own thing while I went and did mine!

As I was following my old route on my GPS, I randomly remembered certain streets from last time (and yet couldn't remember all the hills hehe).

There might be dog shit everywhere but there's no shortage of green space in and around Paris - I'll give them that.

After screaming up and down suburnban hills for a bit I reached the Seine again, in time for a golden sunset.

View from the cockpit. Air horn, front light, GPS, and speedo. There was a camera down below until it's waterproofing failed :( Check out some of the funny shit it captured in its time here.

The road above turned into this path that continued along the Seine for miles, overlooked by some no-doubt figgin' expensive apartments.

I stayed on this for ages until I ended up out the back of where I work in La Défense, at which point I turned in and headed back into central Paris. If anyone happens to have a GPS and wants these routes (or if you just want to see them on a map), see here and here.