The newest tourist attraction in Paris was never supposed to be one

And we’re off, gliding up and bobbing along, my eyes darting around the pod as we gain altitude. Cable-car rides always stir my excitement, especially in France, where snowy peaks and chocolate-box-pretty villages usually vie for your attention. But that’s not on the cards today because this cable car isn’t in the Alps. Instead, it soars on the edge of Paris.

Stretching 4.5 kilometres on the south-eastern fringes of France’s capital, Cable C1 was built principally for commuters. But since opening in December, it’s become something of a visitor attraction for Parisians and overseas tourists alike. A bargain at €2 ($3.50) a ride, it has 105 pods in operation and the queues are a fraction of those leading to the Eiffel Tower and Sacre-Coeur basilica – two of the landmarks you can just about make out in the distance if you take this, Europe’s longest urban cable car, on a clear day.

While passengers enjoyed fairytale, white-powdered vistas during the frigid first week of January when snow tumbled across Western Europe, the scenery is normally as un-Alpine as you could imagine. Despite a few hilly neighbourhoods, such as Montmartre and Belleville, Paris is a fairly flat city and this unremarkable topography extends through most of the metropolitan sprawl.

The terrain, however, undulates slightly more here in the Val-de-Marne, a departement named after the river that meets the Seine and where planners decided a €138 million ($240 million) cable car was more practical and cost-effective than constructing new bridges or underground tunnels. Expected to carry 11,000 passengers a day, it joins a string of other recently completed infrastructure projects, including rail lines and subway extensions that aim to better integrate the wealthy city with its previously neglected banlieues (suburbs) and satellite towns.

Cable C1 links the Pointe du Lac interchange at Creteil, a university town at the end of Metro Line 8 (it’s a half-hour trip from Bastille), with Villa Nova, a quiet residential quarter above the Seine-side town of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. The 20-minute journey is not classically photogenic, but I find it fun and surreal floating above the route’s blend of industrial grit, nature and suburbia.

We swoop over a thronging multi-lane highway – the traffic noise muffled by the pod’s decent soundproofing – and we glide by tidy houses, residential towers, offices, supermarkets, factories, smoking chimneys, storage units, woodlands, reservoirs and railway tracks. I spot a TGV train tilting along at rapid speed. Almost as fast are the flocks of birds flapping by the cable car pylons.

We’re moving at six metres per second (or 21.6 kilometres an hour). Things are largely smooth, but they get a bit nervier (OK, more exciting) as we drop, bump and grind down to the three stations. The most alluring, La Vegetale, means vegetable or plant in French, and is part of a burgeoning green corridor landscaped with new trees, seasonally blooming plants and foot and cycle paths.

You can bring bikes, strollers and wheelchairs onto the 10-seater pods, which are similar, design-wise, to the modern ones studding Europe’s ski resorts. Ours is half-full. I’m sharing it with a student, a uniformed transport worker and two identically dressed tourists taking snaps of each other with the changing backdrops.

Like that endearing pair, I ride non-stop to Villa Nova, where there’s no danger of altitude sickness. It’s perched at an elevation of 86 metres, wedged between agricultural fields and nondescript 20th-century apartments spruced up with large-scale contemporary murals.

I’d be lying if I said Villa Nova was a must-visit, but as is so often the case with travel, it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts. After stretching my legs, I hop back on the cable car, keen for more perspectives of Paris’ urban melange. I’m also daydreaming of a caffeine hit back in the city when a fellow passenger – American – pipes up. “You know, they could do with a nice cafe at that station,” she says, wisely, as our pod rises skywards.

THE DETAILS

FLY
You can fly to Paris from Sydney and Melbourne via Doha with Qatar Airways. See qatarairways.com

RIDE
Separate tickets are needed to ride the Metro and Cable C1 (which requires the same ticket as Paris’ buses and trams). Both can be purchased on the official Bonjour RATP app or with the rechargeable Navigo smart cards available at station ticket offices and machines. See ratp.fr