ETHICAL TRAVELLER: Catherine Mackon responsible tourism
I STOPPED DEAD in my tracks when I spotted an ageing American whizzing around the Eiffel Tower on an upright robotic with two wheels. The website describes it as a "Human transporter. A self-balancing, personal transportation device, sporting high-tech gyroscopes." Luckily, they have also given it a name, the Segway, and visitors to Paris can hire one and join guided tours by day and night. The tours cost from €70 and are available in Budapest, Vienna and various US cities. See www.citysegwaytours.com.
The Segway is such fun, that it inspired me to find other ways of adding a little green sparkle to urban outings. Dublin's Ecocabs look a bit like those cool three-wheeler pushchairs I could only aspire to for my babies. Now I can make up for lost time and have me and my kids wheeled around the city for free, with a team of young cyclists at the helm. The gratis service is thanks to the eco-entrepreneurs who created this product, with each bike paid for through advertising. The maximum journey distance is 2km, which is enough to make it from Temple Bar to The Gate, or Brown Thomas to Clerys in the rain. With more than 2,000 people a week using them, that may say more about our weather than our eco-credentials. See www.ecocabs.iefor a map of designated pick-up points.
For a lesisurely afternoon, you could hire a bike in Phoenix Park, with a number of models on offer, including kids' bikes, tandems and racing bikes. Prices are from €5 an hour to €20 a day for a standard bike and you don't need to stay in the park. See www.phoenixparkbikehire.com.
The latest London attraction is a solar-powered boat on the Serpentine, a 28-acre lake in Hyde Park. Board this stunning stainless-steel design at the boat house on the northside or the jetty near the Princess of Wales memorial fountain on the southside. If you want to jump in a London minicab, award-winning Green Tomato Cars only uses Toyota Prius hybrid cars. See www.greentomatocars.comor call 00-44-208-5680022.
The Petit Train in Nice and Avignon is more eco-twee than ecochic, but it's still a great way to go down Nice's Promenade des Anglais, the old town and flower market, without ruining those chic summer sandals ( www.petittrainnice.com). Velo and vert are all that Parisians are talking about this year, and if you haven't cycled down the Rive Gauche by now, then you really are pushing passé. This is thanks to a new scheme called Velib, whereby you pick up a bike at one of more than a thousand locations and drop it off at another when you are done. You pay a €150 deposit on your credit card, and the first half hour's rental is free ( www.velib.paris.fr). To make the most of Paris's 370km of cycle routes, rent a bike for a few days, or take a guided bike tour with www.parisvelosympa.com. Sundays are best, with many parts of Paris closed off to traffic, a scheme aptly named Paris Respire (Paris breathes). See www.paris.frfor details. They trust their cyclists in Copenhagen, with 2,000 bikes available for free cycling within a specified zone. All you have to do is leave a 20 kroner coin as a returnable deposit. See www.bycyklen.dkfor details.
Similarly, the Call a Bike scheme is available in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and Karlsruhe. Simply find one of their bikes locked to a lamppost, ring the number on the lock to get an unlocking code, and off you go. Just phone the centre when you have finished. See www.callabike.de.
• Catherine Mack is the author of ecoescape: Ireland, available at most bookshops. See www.ecoescape.org