A Day in Paris
This post is a travelogue from a busman’s holiday I took in 2018, where I visited several European cities for a combination of work and pleasure. Out of the five cities on my itinerary, Paris was one of two I visited with no work obligations.
The staircase I climbed and reclimbed in an old building in the Marais.
I spend a beautiful week in Zürich with friends. We stroll around the lake, take a funicular up a stupidly gorgeous Swiss mountain, explore museums. The quality of the food is absurd, the public transit immaculate. Even the geese, usually the asshats of the bird world, are well behaved. Too soon, I’m at the train station, bidding farewell to my college buddy and boarding a train bound for London by way of Paris.
The train pulls out of the station right on schedule. Of course. By the time we reach Basel, the train is warm. Stuffy. When I was purchasing this seat online, sitting at my laptop in Portland, I’d chosen a window seat (because of course) facing backwards (because why not). Now I’m discovering why not, queasy from heat and motion. I get up and sway to the next car, to the snack bar. “Jus de pomme, s’il vous plait. Merci.” The cold juice bottle sweats in my grip as I sway back to my seat.
The queasiness is worth it because I’m here, on a train streaking across the Swiss border into France, and I’ve just ordered apple juice in French. The lakes and cool alpine colors of Switzerland change as we enter Burgundy, and now I’m watching farms slide past — not yellow, not gold, but ochre, a rich color slathered across the land as if by a painter’s knife, as if Cezanne were leaning over my shoulder. We’re cutting a diagonal from the rightmost edge of the canvas to the country’s heart.
The tart apple juice cools me and soothes my stomach. The conductor comes by to scan my ticket. The Swiss conductor was very Swiss: meticulous and reserved. Then at Basel the previously busy car emptied and the French conductor took over. The French conductor is very French: it is clear that he hasn’t the least desire to be on this train, indeed is put out at the very existence of trains, but also suspects me of loving trains to the point of forgery (a realistic suspicion, I admit) and is ever so slightly taken aback when the scan tells him the ticket is good.
We stop in Dijon. The car has cooled now that it’s mostly empty of passengers. A few passengers get off; a few more get on. The train continues onward. Small towns scroll past, their steeples and ancient rooftops peeking from the trees, and then all at once we’re in the outskirts of the city. The buildings elongate, cluster, shoulder up to the tracks. We are slowing. Drifting. We pull into Gare de Lyon and lurch to a stop.
Paris.
#
I step off the train and follow the current of the crowd into the station. Teenagers lounge and heckle; commuters hustle; vendors hail passers-by. Afternoon light falls through the vaulted skylights, washing everyone in bonhomie, and here I am in Paris. Me, here, unfettered and brimming with joy.
The last time I was in Paris (which was also the first time I was ever in Paris) was at midwinter. I came with my cousins; we rented a place in the 1st Arrondissement for Christmas and New Year’s. The city was beautiful but bitter cold.
Not today. I step outside the train station into a summer afternoon and begin to walk. I have a map of Paris downloaded onto my phone, but I don’t want to use it. I’ve hand-written directions to my Airbnb on the back of my train ticket, and I set out to follow them aided only by street signs and landmarks. I know the general direction I need to go; if I see the Seine, I’m too far south, and if I reach the Centre Pompidou, I’ve strayed too far northwest. I’m seeking a tiny apartment in Le Marais, and I’m in no rush.
I reach my first major landmark, La Place de la Bastille. A large square with a huge column of a monument at its center, the road curling around it. I take a guess which spoke to follow off the main road; the signage is tricky at best. My guess is only a little bit wrong. I zig-zag south, back towards my intended route, passing art galleries filled with wonders, jumbled shops, a dispensary. Every cafe is packed with World Cup spectators cheering, cursing, beseeching players and referees to not be blind, to get it right.
With my duffel on my back, I feel like any European backpacker, wandering freely. A visitor rather than a tourist. A visitor who might belong.
I cross an invisible border and am in Le Marais. The streets narrow, some blocked to vehicles entirely, all of them clotted with pedestrians. The smells of falafel and exhaust mingle in the humidity. I’m drenched in sweat and don’t even care. I pass a synagogue, boys in white shirts tugging at their long sidelocks, fathers trailing in their black hats and black jackets and pale fringe. Rainbow flags abound. The curious blend of orthodox Jews and gay pride makes me feel safe, at home. I cut north into the heart of the neighborhood, following my written directions more carefully as I close in on my destination.
There: a wide blue door between two shops. I find the keypad, punch in the code I wrote down from my Airbnb instructions, and the door yields to me. I step into the shade of the courtyard. Above me, a classic Parisian building rises towards the sky, windows guarded by wrought iron. I cross to the back corner, pass an older man as he leaves the building. I find the mailbox where my key is supposed to be waiting for me but —
No key.
Merde.
I hesitate. Maybe the host is still home? I’ve arrived on the early side, although not terribly early. I start up the staircase to the fourth floor. Which is, to American minds, the fifth flour. I am at a point in my life where my cardiovascular conditioning is nothing impressive, and the heat is making my asthma flare up, so by the time I reach the landing I am gasping for breath, heart pounding at my ribs. The tall door is unnumbered. Is this the place? I wheeze and examine the door. There’s no note, not a single clue. I’m afraid to knock.
Suddenly the landing is brighter; someone on a different landing has turned the lights on. Now I remember from my last time in the city: each landing has a timer switch for the lights. Turn the timer, get the lights for about as long as it takes to climb or descend the stairs before the lights blink off again.
The person who turned the lights on passes me on their climb up to a higher floor. I turn to trudge back down the stairs and pause, distracted from my frustration by the astonishing spiral below. This staircase is one of the most beautiful sights of my life. I forget my rising panic for a moment and pull out my phone to snap a photo.
I descend, check the mailbox again; still no key.
Go back out into the courtyard and curse myself for not having downloaded the Airbnb app onto my phone. I have the most tenuous of cell phone connections, a slender invisible tube permitting a handful of bytes per second. I feel the flywheel of worry in my belly start its slow spin. With an effort, I stop its motion. I’m not 27 and broke. I have a Visa with an astronomical credit limit. There will be a hotel with a room; I will be able to afford it; it will be fine.
I try to download the app and watch the progress crawl: 1%. 2%. 3%. 3%. 3%. Time remaining: 1 hour.
God. Damn. It. I can plan an epic trip, I can navigate across the continent via train, I can muddle my way through multiple languages I barely speak, but I can’t remember to download the one phone app that’s crucial to my journey. I sometimes don’t understand my own befuddled brain.
Back into the dim foyer of the building. I triple-check the mailbox: definitely the right mailbox. Definitely no key.
I start up the staircase a second time, remembering to turn the lights on this time. At the fourth landing, I examine the right-hand door carefully. The mottled plaster matches the pattern in the photo in the Airbnb listing. This is definitely the right apartment. I knock, a hesitant shave-and-a-haircut. While I wait, I hear noise from the neighboring apartments and the worry flywheel nudges into motion again: what if it’s noisy tonight, what if I can’t sleep, what if, what if.
I knock again, louder. A simple KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK. Still no reply.
Not ready to give up yet, I pull out my laptop, where the check-in instructions are cached in my browser. This is definitely the right place. I definitely followed the instructions. I hold my phone up, waving it around until it has a small but solid bar of reception, and manage to log in to the Airbnb mobile website. (No, maddeningly helpful popup message, I do not want to use the app! If I had the damn app in the first place, I would already be using it!) I type out a message to the host, heart in my throat while I wait for it to send. I study my phone, waiting for a reply, and although usually this is an exercise in futility, today it pays off. After a minute I see a reply from the host: “The key is under the door mop.”
Door mop. I bend over the door mat and lo and behold, the flash of a key through its weave. I send the host a relieved thank-you. The worry flywheel slows and locks in place, quiet for the rest of the night.
The old metal key sits in my hand, heavy, like a living thing. It goes into the lock, turns, and opens the door wide.
The place is perfection. Cool tile floors; a tidy desk; tall windows that open to the courtyard between this building and the next. There’s an IKEA bed with a downy duvet. The bathroom has a clawfoot tub and clean, cracked tiles.
Best of all, no wi-fi. Here, my laptop is a very fancy word processor. No work, no demands, no urgency.
I flash back to the hotel in Iceland with the narrow ocean view. I could spend a month here, too. A season. Wander the city in the mornings, come back to write, head out again in the evening with a sketchbook and no goals. Find an Internet cafe once a week to send an email reassuring family I’m still alive. One small room and the entire city.
I climb into the shower and wash off the travel grime, then sit at the desk, looking out the window. In the courtyard I hear children playing, calling to each other in — not French, I don’t think; Yiddish, perhaps? The buttery light on the next building, the blue of the sky, the quiet underneath the clamor below. Part of me is impatient to be out in the city, but I don’t move. I’m too happy to be sitting here.
After I’ve drunk my fill of the light, the serenity, I take my key and wallet and phone and let myself out of the room. Down the stairs, across the courtyard, out the blue doors. Time to wander.
I have an initial destination in mind, a well-reviewed restaurant a short walk away. I wait in line, listening closely to the patterns of conversation with the host. Here’s how you ask for a table, here’s how you say how many in your party. I know the basic words; now I’m listening for how they get assembled.
By the time I reach the front of the line I know it will probably be a 45-minute wait. I ask anyway, since it’s just me and perhaps they can fit me in sooner but no, quarante cinq minutes. I’d rather not wait that long so I continue on. Just one block later I find a little Spanish restaurant where I’m seated right away. I try to speak French but the staff switches to English for me immediately, cheerfully pragmatic. Given a choice, I take a French menu rather than English. It might have been a foolish choice, but the menu is in both French and Spanish, so I’m able to fall back to my rusty Spanish to make sense of my options.
In most restaurants, in most places, I feel a subtle but powerful time pressure. I eat quickly, pay quickly, move on. Perhaps it has nothing to do with restaurants, perhaps it’s just my own anxiety to be moving, on to the next thing. But tonight, in this old building, there is no hurry. No pressure. Just the texture of the walls, the butter against crusty bread, the World Cup game on the television above the picturesque bar.
After a while the waiter comes over. I order a glass of Albariño and a parade of small dishes. The dishes come out one at a time. I eat them with reverence, like a sacrament. The bread and the wine. The olives and asparagus. The roasted eggplant. The cold acid of gazpacho. For dessert, lemon sorbet in a scooped out frozen lemon half. I ask for Amaretto, but the waiter explains that this is a Spanish restaurant, not an Italian one. There’s no Amaretto.
I ask what he would recommend instead.
Without hesitation, he suggests an apple liqueur. Sure, I say. Bring me an apple liqueur.
It’s terrible. I drink it to the last drop.
#
When I leave the restaurant, instead of choosing a destination, I meander. I pass the house of Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo! As a teenager I disappeared into the world of the hunchback of Notre Dame, amazed at what a page-turner this old book turned out to be. Next to the house that once housed Victor Hugo is a small city park, its aesthetic made familiar by Merchant Ivory films. The perimeter is a walkway of fine, pale gravel, the center a grassy rectangle, and both are bordered by linden trees, their crowns trimmed into cubes. I claim an empty bench under one of the trees. Families and couples, students and tourists, mingle in the little park, enjoying the summer.
It’s been a long day of walking in two different cities, two different countries. I savor the cool of the fading daylight, the gentle euphoria of good food and good wine consumed slowly. Then I rouse myself and wander some more.
Along one narrow street, I pass an eccentric character in a dressing grown, talking on a cell phone in a plummy English accent. I pass restaurants and wine bars, falafel stands, synagogues and churches, schools. Plaques commemorate things that happened decades ago, centuries ago. Piles of garbage sit on cobblestones, ripe in the summer air.
I wander my way back to my apartment without really trying, strangely oriented in this disorienting city. I climb the four flights of stairs and let myself into the little apartment, grateful to have found the key, grateful not to be in a plush, soulless hotel.
Contrary to my fears, the old building is surprisingly quiet at night. The children have abandoned the courtyard; there are no blaring televisions or loud conversations. I sleep well.
#
I’m up by seven the next morning, rested and eager. I boil water for my tea and have a yogurt while I review my plan for the day. My train for London leaves from Gare du Nord in the afternoon, so I have the morning to explore.
I am eternally besotted with morning, and I’ve never seen a more beautiful morning than this one. The streets are cool and quiet, the tourists only just now starting to rouse. I know where I want to go, but I’m not in a rush, so I hand over my navigation to systems much older than Google maps and just start walking.
When I was here for Christmas with my cousins, we stayed across the street from the Louvre, a short walk west of here, so I’ve wandered these streets before. Now I follow my nose. This block looks familiar; here’s a major thoroughfare; what’s along here?
I turn a corner and there it is. Stohrer, founded 1730. The oldest patisserie in an old and storied city. I first came here to buy Christmas treats with my cousins; now I’ve found it again by sheer instinct. The patisserie is empty of customers when I walk in, which is just how I like it.
I scan the cases; the woman behind the counter asks -- in French -- what I would like. I ask her -- also in French -- Do they have brioche au chocolat? Ah, no, she’s sorry, not this morning. It’s fine, I say, and ask for a chocolate croissant. She smiles and puts a croissant in a brown paper sleeve. Would I like anything else? No, that’s all. She tells me the price. (The intense concentration required simply to parse the numbers makes me I’m grateful I don’t need to calculate and try to speak French at the same time.) As I’m pulling a five Euro bill from my wallet, an American family traipses into the shop.
“Um, yeah, hi, do you have breakfast food?” the mother asks from the doorway. “Eggs or cereal, anything like that?”
The woman behind the counter, who has been all sun and accommodation, at once goes cloudy. “Non,” she glowers, “we are a patisserie.”
“Right. Okay. Come on kids, let’s find another place.” The parents herd the children out, and the woman behind the counter shakes her head. She puts my money in the register. As quickly as they came, the clouds pass. She smiles and hands me my change, thanking me for coming in. I leave the shop, blazingly pleased with myself.
I find a park and settle onto a bench to eat my croissant and scribble in my journal. What should I do with my morning? There’s a fancy tea shop nearby that my friends in Zürich told me about; I love tea but don’t feel like spending my precious morning in Paris in a store. The Picasso museum is nearby, but I hate the idea of rushing through it. I look at the map and decide to go to the Musée des Art et Metiers, the Museum of Arts and Science. I get up and walk north to the museum, confused when I arrive at a church building. I’m expecting a colorful modernist facade, but I soon realize I’ve confused Centre Pompidou with the museum. They don’t open for another fifteen minutes so I sit in the garden outside the entrance. A group of middle school kids has queued up; they’re clearly doing a class field trip to the museum.
Once inside, I choose my path through the museum based on which areas seem least populated. This proves a savvy decision. I spend the first half hour studying the history of modern communications, from telegraphs forward, and marveling at the connections with software engineering. Early telegraphs, for example, had to solve the problem of multiplexing separate signals onto single wires — problems that echo many of the fundamental challenges of modern Internet networking. Eventually my interest in the technical intricacies leads me to abandon my efforts to read the displays in French, and I work my way from telegraphs to radios to film, with a printing press thrown into the mix.
I could spend an entire day in the museum, but I have a train to catch. After exploring a couple of rooms I end in the converted church building that now houses a replica of Foucault’s pendulum and a multi-level display of old automobiles and airplanes. Usually technical museums are in sleek, modernist buildings; here, I glory in the contrast between the mechanisms on display and the vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows. Then, all too soon, it’s time to leave.
I find my way back to my apartment, climb the staircase one last time, heave my duffel onto my back, and undertake my next challenge: navigating the Paris Metro.
This is not my most shining transportation moment. I walk down the steps into the Metro station and proceed to be stymied by the ticket machine. I stand in front of it, confused and frustrated, to the annoyance of the stream of people behind me waiting for their turn. Eventually I step away and watch a few other people make their purchases. I’m proud of the ways my brain works well, but it’s a slow thinker, especially when overstimulated, and it takes a few minutes for it to work through a plan of attack. Finally I re-insert myself into the ticket queue and successfully purchase a card that gets me through the turnstile.
I’m relieved that I’m going to Gare du Nord, one of the major hubs; it’s unambiguously marked and I’m easily able to catch the right train. I find a seat that has a clear view of the Metro map so that I can track my progress. I love learning public transit, and my enthusiasm translates into obsessive recalibration of where I am and where I’m heading. It’s intense but I rarely get lost.
I arrive at the immense Gare du Nord station with plenty of time to spare. I get lunch — a sandwich and a brioche au chocolat, with its custardy goodness — and then go to find my train. It’s not leaving for a couple more hours, but I want to make sure I know where to go when it’s time to board. I’m a bit puzzled finding the right platform; finally I ask one of the staff where to go. As he gives me directions, something about his manner tips me off that I’ve underestimated the logistical challenges I’m about to face.
My suspicions are confirmed. I’ve been thinking about the train to London as a domestic journey, like the one from Zürich to Paris. Find the platform, get on the train 15 minutes before it leaves. What I’ve forgotten is that even in these pre-Brexit days, London is still outside the Schengen zone. This is an international trip, with all the security and passport checks and queueing that entails.
Luckily, my natural paranoia about being late for travel has given me, if not a generous margin, then at least an adequate one. I wend my way up to security, grabbing bites of my sandwich as I can. All my travel anxiety manifests in a rising panic that they’ll take away my brioche au chocolat as a security risk.
They don’t. I make it through security, through the passport check, and into a vast cattle pen filled with irritable Europeans of every nationality. I have a business class ticket with an assigned seat, but I’m still antsy to board the train and get settled. I wait, and wait some more; the train is delayed, so I keep waiting. At least I have my brioche au chocolat.
Finally the cattle chutes open and I’m swept through them, down a staircase onto the platform, where I speed walk the twenty miles to my train car. Once I’m on board, my “what if something goes wrong and I miss this train” anxiety subsides, replaced by my usual glee at being on a train. And this is not just any train: we’ll pass through northeast France and then descend into the Chunnel, traversing 31 miles underneath the English Channel and emerging at the white cliffs of Dover.
Perhaps it is because I love travel so much, because I’m so fully attuned, that I need so much sleep when I’m on the road. I watch the landscape through France, but once we descend into the dark of the Channel Tunnel, I nod off. I wake up briefly to marvel at Dover as we emerge and then drowse again until we reach St. Pancras, the international terminal next door to King’s Cross, one of my favorite and most familiar places in London.
I spend a beautiful week in Zürich with friends. We stroll around the lake, take a funicular up a stupidly gorgeous Swiss mountain, explore museums. The quality of the food is absurd, the public transit immaculate. Even the geese, usually the asshats of the bird world, are well behaved. Too soon, I’m at the train station, bidding farewell to my college buddy and boarding a train bound for London by way of Paris.
The train pulls out of the station right on schedule. Of course. By the time we reach Basel, the train is warm. Stuffy. When I was purchasing this seat online, sitting at my laptop in Portland, I’d chosen a window seat (because of course) facing backwards (because why not). Now I’m discovering why not, queasy from heat and motion. I get up and sway to the next car, to the snack bar. “Jus de pomme, s’il vous plait. Merci.” The cold juice bottle sweats in my grip as I sway back to my seat.
The queasiness is worth it because I’m here, on a train streaking across the Swiss border into France, and I’ve just ordered apple juice in French. The lakes and cool alpine colors of Switzerland change as we enter Burgundy, and now I’m watching farms slide past — not yellow, not gold, but ochre, a rich color slathered across the land as if by a painter’s knife, as if Cezanne were leaning over my shoulder. We’re cutting a diagonal from the rightmost edge of the canvas to the country’s heart.
The tart apple juice cools me and soothes my stomach. The conductor comes by to scan my ticket. The Swiss conductor was very Swiss: meticulous and reserved. Then at Basel the previously busy car emptied and the French conductor took over. The French conductor is very French: it is clear that he hasn’t the least desire to be on this train, indeed is put out at the very existence of trains, but also suspects me of loving trains to the point of forgery (a realistic suspicion, I admit) and is ever so slightly taken aback when the scan tells him the ticket is good.
We stop in Dijon. The car has cooled now that it’s mostly empty of passengers. A few passengers get off; a few more get on. The train continues onward. Small towns scroll past, their steeples and ancient rooftops peeking from the trees, and then all at once we’re in the outskirts of the city. The buildings elongate, cluster, shoulder up to the tracks. We are slowing. Drifting. We pull into Gare de Lyon and lurch to a stop.
Paris.
#
I step off the train and follow the current of the crowd into the station. Teenagers lounge and heckle; commuters hustle; vendors hail passers-by. Afternoon light falls through the vaulted skylights, washing everyone in bonhomie, and here I am in Paris. Me, here, unfettered and brimming with joy.
The last time I was in Paris (which was also the first time I was ever in Paris) was at midwinter. I came with my cousins; we rented a place in the 1st Arrondissement for Christmas and New Year’s. The city was beautiful but bitter cold.
Not today. I step outside the train station into a summer afternoon and begin to walk. I have a map of Paris downloaded onto my phone, but I don’t want to use it. I’ve hand-written directions to my Airbnb on the back of my train ticket, and I set out to follow them aided only by street signs and landmarks. I know the general direction I need to go; if I see the Seine, I’m too far south, and if I reach the Centre Pompidou, I’ve strayed too far northwest. I’m seeking a tiny apartment in Le Marais, and I’m in no rush.
I reach my first major landmark, La Place de la Bastille. A large square with a huge column of a monument at its center, the road curling around it. I take a guess which spoke to follow off the main road; the signage is tricky at best. My guess is only a little bit wrong. I zig-zag south, back towards my intended route, passing art galleries filled with wonders, jumbled shops, a dispensary. Every cafe is packed with World Cup spectators cheering, cursing, beseeching players and referees to not be blind, to get it right.
With my duffel on my back, I feel like any European backpacker, wandering freely. A visitor rather than a tourist. A visitor who might belong.
I cross an invisible border and am in Le Marais. The streets narrow, some blocked to vehicles entirely, all of them clotted with pedestrians. The smells of falafel and exhaust mingle in the humidity. I’m drenched in sweat and don’t even care. I pass a synagogue, boys in white shirts tugging at their long sidelocks, fathers trailing in their black hats and black jackets and pale fringe. Rainbow flags abound. The curious blend of orthodox Jews and gay pride makes me feel safe, at home. I cut north into the heart of the neighborhood, following my written directions more carefully as I close in on my destination.
There: a wide blue door between two shops. I find the keypad, punch in the code I wrote down from my Airbnb instructions, and the door yields to me. I step into the shade of the courtyard. Above me, a classic Parisian building rises towards the sky, windows guarded by wrought iron. I cross to the back corner, pass an older man as he leaves the building. I find the mailbox where my key is supposed to be waiting for me but —
No key.
Merde.
I hesitate. Maybe the host is still home? I’ve arrived on the early side, although not terribly early. I start up the staircase to the fourth floor. Which is, to American minds, the fifth flour. I am at a point in my life where my cardiovascular conditioning is nothing impressive, and the heat is making my asthma flare up, so by the time I reach the landing I am gasping for breath, heart pounding at my ribs. The tall door is unnumbered. Is this the place? I wheeze and examine the door. There’s no note, not a single clue. I’m afraid to knock.
Suddenly the landing is brighter; someone on a different landing has turned the lights on. Now I remember from my last time in the city: each landing has a timer switch for the lights. Turn the timer, get the lights for about as long as it takes to climb or descend the stairs before the lights blink off again.
The person who turned the lights on passes me on their climb up to a higher floor. I turn to trudge back down the stairs and pause, distracted from my frustration by the astonishing spiral below. This staircase is one of the most beautiful sights of my life. I forget my rising panic for a moment and pull out my phone to snap a photo.
I descend, check the mailbox again; still no key.
Go back out into the courtyard and curse myself for not having downloaded the Airbnb app onto my phone. I have the most tenuous of cell phone connections, a slender invisible tube permitting a handful of bytes per second. I feel the flywheel of worry in my belly start its slow spin. With an effort, I stop its motion. I’m not 27 and broke. I have a Visa with an astronomical credit limit. There will be a hotel with a room; I will be able to afford it; it will be fine.
I try to download the app and watch the progress crawl: 1%. 2%. 3%. 3%. 3%. Time remaining: 1 hour.
God. Damn. It. I can plan an epic trip, I can navigate across the continent via train, I can muddle my way through multiple languages I barely speak, but I can’t remember to download the one phone app that’s crucial to my journey. I sometimes don’t understand my own befuddled brain.
Back into the dim foyer of the building. I triple-check the mailbox: definitely the right mailbox. Definitely no key.
I start up the staircase a second time, remembering to turn the lights on this time. At the fourth landing, I examine the right-hand door carefully. The mottled plaster matches the pattern in the photo in the Airbnb listing. This is definitely the right apartment. I knock, a hesitant shave-and-a-haircut. While I wait, I hear noise from the neighboring apartments and the worry flywheel nudges into motion again: what if it’s noisy tonight, what if I can’t sleep, what if, what if.
I knock again, louder. A simple KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK. Still no reply.
Not ready to give up yet, I pull out my laptop, where the check-in instructions are cached in my browser. This is definitely the right place. I definitely followed the instructions. I hold my phone up, waving it around until it has a small but solid bar of reception, and manage to log in to the Airbnb mobile website. (No, maddeningly helpful popup message, I do not want to use the app! If I had the damn app in the first place, I would already be using it!) I type out a message to the host, heart in my throat while I wait for it to send. I study my phone, waiting for a reply, and although usually this is an exercise in futility, today it pays off. After a minute I see a reply from the host: “The key is under the door mop.”
Door mop. I bend over the door mat and lo and behold, the flash of a key through its weave. I send the host a relieved thank-you. The worry flywheel slows and locks in place, quiet for the rest of the night.
The old metal key sits in my hand, heavy, like a living thing. It goes into the lock, turns, and opens the door wide.
The place is perfection. Cool tile floors; a tidy desk; tall windows that open to the courtyard between this building and the next. There’s an IKEA bed with a downy duvet. The bathroom has a clawfoot tub and clean, cracked tiles.
Best of all, no wi-fi. Here, my laptop is a very fancy word processor. No work, no demands, no urgency.
I flash back to the hotel in Iceland with the narrow ocean view. I could spend a month here, too. A season. Wander the city in the mornings, come back to write, head out again in the evening with a sketchbook and no goals. Find an Internet cafe once a week to send an email reassuring family I’m still alive. One small room and the entire city.
I climb into the shower and wash off the travel grime, then sit at the desk, looking out the window. In the courtyard I hear children playing, calling to each other in — not French, I don’t think; Yiddish, perhaps? The buttery light on the next building, the blue of the sky, the quiet underneath the clamor below. Part of me is impatient to be out in the city, but I don’t move. I’m too happy to be sitting here.
After I’ve drunk my fill of the light, the serenity, I take my key and wallet and phone and let myself out of the room. Down the stairs, across the courtyard, out the blue doors. Time to wander.
I have an initial destination in mind, a well-reviewed restaurant a short walk away. I wait in line, listening closely to the patterns of conversation with the host. Here’s how you ask for a table, here’s how you say how many in your party. I know the basic words; now I’m listening for how they get assembled.
By the time I reach the front of the line I know it will probably be a 45-minute wait. I ask anyway, since it’s just me and perhaps they can fit me in sooner but no, quarante cinq minutes. I’d rather not wait that long so I continue on. Just one block later I find a little Spanish restaurant where I’m seated right away. I try to speak French but the staff switches to English for me immediately, cheerfully pragmatic. Given a choice, I take a French menu rather than English. It might have been a foolish choice, but the menu is in both French and Spanish, so I’m able to fall back to my rusty Spanish to make sense of my options.
In most restaurants, in most places, I feel a subtle but powerful time pressure. I eat quickly, pay quickly, move on. Perhaps it has nothing to do with restaurants, perhaps it’s just my own anxiety to be moving, on to the next thing. But tonight, in this old building, there is no hurry. No pressure. Just the texture of the walls, the butter against crusty bread, the World Cup game on the television above the picturesque bar.
After a while the waiter comes over. I order a glass of Albariño and a parade of small dishes. The dishes come out one at a time. I eat them with reverence, like a sacrament. The bread and the wine. The olives and asparagus. The roasted eggplant. The cold acid of gazpacho. For dessert, lemon sorbet in a scooped out frozen lemon half. I ask for Amaretto, but the waiter explains that this is a Spanish restaurant, not an Italian one. There’s no Amaretto.
I ask what he would recommend instead.
Without hesitation, he suggests an apple liqueur. Sure, I say. Bring me an apple liqueur.
It’s terrible. I drink it to the last drop.
#
When I leave the restaurant, instead of choosing a destination, I meander. I pass the house of Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo! As a teenager I disappeared into the world of the hunchback of Notre Dame, amazed at what a page-turner this old book turned out to be. Next to the house that once housed Victor Hugo is a small city park, its aesthetic made familiar by Merchant Ivory films. The perimeter is a walkway of fine, pale gravel, the center a grassy rectangle, and both are bordered by linden trees, their crowns trimmed into cubes. I claim an empty bench under one of the trees. Families and couples, students and tourists, mingle in the little park, enjoying the summer.
It’s been a long day of walking in two different cities, two different countries. I savor the cool of the fading daylight, the gentle euphoria of good food and good wine consumed slowly. Then I rouse myself and wander some more.
Along one narrow street, I pass an eccentric character in a dressing grown, talking on a cell phone in a plummy English accent. I pass restaurants and wine bars, falafel stands, synagogues and churches, schools. Plaques commemorate things that happened decades ago, centuries ago. Piles of garbage sit on cobblestones, ripe in the summer air.
I wander my way back to my apartment without really trying, strangely oriented in this disorienting city. I climb the four flights of stairs and let myself into the little apartment, grateful to have found the key, grateful not to be in a plush, soulless hotel.
Contrary to my fears, the old building is surprisingly quiet at night. The children have abandoned the courtyard; there are no blaring televisions or loud conversations. I sleep well.
#
I’m up by seven the next morning, rested and eager. I boil water for my tea and have a yogurt while I review my plan for the day. My train for London leaves from Gare du Nord in the afternoon, so I have the morning to explore.
I am eternally besotted with morning, and I’ve never seen a more beautiful morning than this one. The streets are cool and quiet, the tourists only just now starting to rouse. I know where I want to go, but I’m not in a rush, so I hand over my navigation to systems much older than Google maps and just start walking.
When I was here for Christmas with my cousins, we stayed across the street from the Louvre, a short walk west of here, so I’ve wandered these streets before. Now I follow my nose. This block looks familiar; here’s a major thoroughfare; what’s along here?
I turn a corner and there it is. Stohrer, founded 1730. The oldest patisserie in an old and storied city. I first came here to buy Christmas treats with my cousins; now I’ve found it again by sheer instinct. The patisserie is empty of customers when I walk in, which is just how I like it.
I scan the cases; the woman behind the counter asks -- in French -- what I would like. I ask her -- also in French -- Do they have brioche au chocolat? Ah, no, she’s sorry, not this morning. It’s fine, I say, and ask for a chocolate croissant. She smiles and puts a croissant in a brown paper sleeve. Would I like anything else? No, that’s all. She tells me the price. (The intense concentration required simply to parse the numbers makes me I’m grateful I don’t need to calculate and try to speak French at the same time.) As I’m pulling a five Euro bill from my wallet, an American family traipses into the shop.
“Um, yeah, hi, do you have breakfast food?” the mother asks from the doorway. “Eggs or cereal, anything like that?”
The woman behind the counter, who has been all sun and accommodation, at once goes cloudy. “Non,” she glowers, “we are a patisserie.”
“Right. Okay. Come on kids, let’s find another place.” The parents herd the children out, and the woman behind the counter shakes her head. She puts my money in the register. As quickly as they came, the clouds pass. She smiles and hands me my change, thanking me for coming in. I leave the shop, blazingly pleased with myself.
I find a park and settle onto a bench to eat my croissant and scribble in my journal. What should I do with my morning? There’s a fancy tea shop nearby that my friends in Zürich told me about; I love tea but don’t feel like spending my precious morning in Paris in a store. The Picasso museum is nearby, but I hate the idea of rushing through it. I look at the map and decide to go to the Musée des Art et Metiers, the Museum of Arts and Science. I get up and walk north to the museum, confused when I arrive at a church building. I’m expecting a colorful modernist facade, but I soon realize I’ve confused Centre Pompidou with the museum. They don’t open for another fifteen minutes so I sit in the garden outside the entrance. A group of middle school kids has queued up; they’re clearly doing a class field trip to the museum.
Once inside, I choose my path through the museum based on which areas seem least populated. This proves a savvy decision. I spend the first half hour studying the history of modern communications, from telegraphs forward, and marveling at the connections with software engineering. Early telegraphs, for example, had to solve the problem of multiplexing separate signals onto single wires — problems that echo many of the fundamental challenges of modern Internet networking. Eventually my interest in the technical intricacies leads me to abandon my efforts to read the displays in French, and I work my way from telegraphs to radios to film, with a printing press thrown into the mix.
I could spend an entire day in the museum, but I have a train to catch. After exploring a couple of rooms I end in the converted church building that now houses a replica of Foucault’s pendulum and a multi-level display of old automobiles and airplanes. Usually technical museums are in sleek, modernist buildings; here, I glory in the contrast between the mechanisms on display and the vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows. Then, all too soon, it’s time to leave.
I find my way back to my apartment, climb the staircase one last time, heave my duffel onto my back, and undertake my next challenge: navigating the Paris Metro.
This is not my most shining transportation moment. I walk down the steps into the Metro station and proceed to be stymied by the ticket machine. I stand in front of it, confused and frustrated, to the annoyance of the stream of people behind me waiting for their turn. Eventually I step away and watch a few other people make their purchases. I’m proud of the ways my brain works well, but it’s a slow thinker, especially when overstimulated, and it takes a few minutes for it to work through a plan of attack. Finally I re-insert myself into the ticket queue and successfully purchase a card that gets me through the turnstile.
I’m relieved that I’m going to Gare du Nord, one of the major hubs; it’s unambiguously marked and I’m easily able to catch the right train. I find a seat that has a clear view of the Metro map so that I can track my progress. I love learning public transit, and my enthusiasm translates into obsessive recalibration of where I am and where I’m heading. It’s intense but I rarely get lost.
I arrive at the immense Gare du Nord station with plenty of time to spare. I get lunch — a sandwich and a brioche au chocolat, with its custardy goodness — and then go to find my train. It’s not leaving for a couple more hours, but I want to make sure I know where to go when it’s time to board. I’m a bit puzzled finding the right platform; finally I ask one of the staff where to go. As he gives me directions, something about his manner tips me off that I’ve underestimated the logistical challenges I’m about to face.
My suspicions are confirmed. I’ve been thinking about the train to London as a domestic journey, like the one from Zürich to Paris. Find the platform, get on the train 15 minutes before it leaves. What I’ve forgotten is that even in these pre-Brexit days, London is still outside the Schengen zone. This is an international trip, with all the security and passport checks and queueing that entails.
Luckily, my natural paranoia about being late for travel has given me, if not a generous margin, then at least an adequate one. I wend my way up to security, grabbing bites of my sandwich as I can. All my travel anxiety manifests in a rising panic that they’ll take away my brioche au chocolat as a security risk.
They don’t. I make it through security, through the passport check, and into a vast cattle pen filled with irritable Europeans of every nationality. I have a business class ticket with an assigned seat, but I’m still antsy to board the train and get settled. I wait, and wait some more; the train is delayed, so I keep waiting. At least I have my brioche au chocolat.
Finally the cattle chutes open and I’m swept through them, down a staircase onto the platform, where I speed walk the twenty miles to my train car. Once I’m on board, my “what if something goes wrong and I miss this train” anxiety subsides, replaced by my usual glee at being on a train. And this is not just any train: we’ll pass through northeast France and then descend into the Chunnel, traversing 31 miles underneath the English Channel and emerging at the white cliffs of Dover.
Perhaps it is because I love travel so much, because I’m so fully attuned, that I need so much sleep when I’m on the road. I watch the landscape through France, but once we descend into the dark of the Channel Tunnel, I nod off. I wake up briefly to marvel at Dover as we emerge and then drowse again until we reach St. Pancras, the international terminal next door to King’s Cross, one of my favorite and most familiar places in London.
