Real time rambling

Walking through Paris on a sunny day without a set destination is one of the world's great pleasures. Just ask Walter Benjamin. Or any one of the Situationists.

It's a quarter past three on a Tuesday afternoon and I've wandered right across Paris today. I'm staying in Clichy, the Kings Cross of Paris - although Clichy has reigned for far longer as a red-light destination - and that's where I started. I ambled down the rue d'Amsterdam and past St. Lazare and got a little disoriented around the Grand Boulevards. I ate a crèpe (beurre sucre), found myself again, at least in a geographical sense, outside the Opéra and headed south to Place Vendôme and the Palais Royale. I got sucked into the forecourt of the Louvre and had to turn back and sit for a while in the Tuileries gardens, admiring the statuary, the hollyhocks, the crowd. I winked at Place Concorde, waved at the Eiffel Tower (actually, what I did was cop an eyeful of it), and headed east along the right bank of the Seine. East, east, past the bouquinistes and crossed over the Pont des Arts to the Ile de la Cîté. I'd made a firm decision not to stop at any museums or monuments, just to meander, but had thought I might
make an exception for the Ste Chapelle, an interior which makes my heart pound. The queues wrapped around the Préfecture so I kept going, crossing over to St Michel, hugging the left bank and continuing east until I reached the bridge to the Ile St Louis. Berthillon central being shut till September, I satisfied myself with a Berthillon icecream around the corner - scoops of rhubarb and ginger caramel icecream - and walked through St Germain, past the gorgeous Ste Séverine church and through the Cluny gardens and into a cafe with wireless and here I am, breathless, au bout du souffle, almost at the end of this sentence, and only halfway through my walk.

What remains this afternoon? The Lost Generation Memorial Stroll through the Left Bank. To do my sometime pantheon of literary and artistic heroes justice, I should probably take a pre-emptive apéritif, thereby turning the LGM Stroll into the LGM Stagger... Montparnasse, Ste Sulpice, rue Mouffetard, rue de lOdéon, rue de Fleurus, St Germain des Près. All full of tourists gawping must more conspicuously than I would dare. A kir or two and I dare say I won't even notice them.