Long walks

Paris is a circular city, bisected by the River Siene across the middle. Neighborhoods (called Arrondissements) are numbered, starting in the center and spiraling outward and around itself, like a snail’s shell, crossing back and forth across the river as the numbers increase.

This suits the city well, for nothing is linear really, but really a set of relationships and relativity. For example, Paul and I took the metro south across town, to the Left Bank (the south side of the river) to find an English language bookstore one day, and to eat a proper American breakfast (eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, and a bottomless cup-o-joe) the next. We pop up out of the subway into the 6th Arr., and easily while away the afternoon wandering further southward and westward, down quaint little streets, along grand boulevards, into the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens until deciding to start working our way homeward, northbound. Due to the higglety-piggley direction of the streets, one can never stay on a direct cardinal direction for more than a block or two, before veering slightly left or slightly right, and eventually wending your way back in the direction of your destination. Walking from the 5th Arr., we passed through the 4th, the 1st, and the 2nd before finally making back into the 10th to our apartment.

All this to say, that by the very nature of the Paris street structure, all walks are circuitous routes – which is exactly our favorite kind, when we’re here to walk and talk and to take in the city as we stroll along!

It’s been a little gray and rainy, but an April rain in Paris – who’s going to complain? It’s made for some incredibly dramatic skies, and it has afforded us some further justified luxury of staying in to read and write (“Oh look, it’s going to rain. Perhaps we should stay in our pajamas all day”) and also an inspiration to get out of the apartment and see the city, fresh after a rain has passed (“Oh my, look at that blue sky, let’s go for a walk”). Truth is, I actually prefer a faintly gray day for walking around. The air is still, often the temperature has been just right, and I can take in a broader view of the city without the brim of my sun hat truncating what I see as we walk along. On most of our long walk days, the sky has vacillated between gray and blue, giving us a nice change of atmosphere every few hours. We have gotten lucky to see the sun set over Paris almost every evening, the long shadows and coral-colored sky warming the gray stone buildings to a golden hue, as the twinkling of the city of lights comes to life.

The long walks invariably end with food, in some capacity, come evening. Between our body clocks being slow to adjust (if we get up before noon, we call it “early”) and the further north latitude of Paris already having noticeably longer days (it doesn’t get dark until after 9pm) we generally aren’t hungry for dinner until around 10pm. With our schedule wide open and whim our constant companion, we either find a nice brasserie to be served sidewalk-side, or go to the market for meat, cheese and wine. The thing about Paris is that at any given moment, when one feels inclined to stop or shop for food, there are not just a few options, but dozens of choices within eye-shot. But how does one choose? The decision cannot be overthought, but atmosphere, crowd, and available tables are all sensed in one passing glance across the front of the bistro. If all signs point to “yes”, then the last, and possibly most important, consideration is what will we be looking at while enjoying our food, wine and conversation. Fortuitously, Saturday night my curiosity to finally see the infamous inside-out Pompidou Centre up close took us into the Beaubourg pedestrian district. After marveling at the modern architecture, and all the people just hanging out in the public square, we found ourselves a perfect sidewalk table, and paired it with a perfect bottle of wine, skewered steak, ratatouille and a selection of delectable soft French cheese. The lightly wine-buzzed walk home at 12:30am went quickly and blissfully.