Paris is a good place to start a ride and a bad place to ride in. The Périphérique, the ring road, carries more than a million vehicles a day, scooters thread through the lanes with great confidence, and cobbles, tram rails and painted crossings are slippery in the wet. The city also operates a low-emission zone, so check the rules and get the right sticker for your bike before you arrive. If you can, leave the bike at the hotel, ride the metro and save the machine for the morning when you head out.
Once you are out, the east side of the city opens onto the plains of Brie, with big skies, fields of wheat and rapeseed, and quiet small roads through villages of pale stone. This day's ride leads to Provins, about ninety kilometres away, a medieval town that was once one of the great trading centres of the Champagne fairs. Its upper town still has ramparts, a great tower called the Caesar Tower, and cellars that run under the streets. Provins also grows roses, and the old recipe for rose petal jam is still made.
Paris itself, of course, is full of history. The Seine runs through the middle in a wide curve, with Notre-Dame on its island, the Louvre along the right bank and the Eiffel Tower built for the exhibition of 1889. The city has had its present form since the nineteenth century, when Baron Haussmann cut the wide boulevards through the medieval maze. If you only have an evening, go for a slow walk along the quays at dusk, when the lights come on and the bouquinistes are shutting up their green boxes.
Fuel is plentiful, though there are fewer stations in the centre than in the suburbs, so fill up on the outskirts before you head out. Breakfast on the way out of town in a corner café, with a coffee and a croissant at the bar, is the proper thing, and by the time you reach the Brie, with cheese in its fields, the capital will have faded in the mirrors.