En train de flâner
The way you experience this city changes day to day and from person to person. I have traversed the area of Le Marais and Hôtel de Ville and Notre Dame so many times with many different people and it is a new experience every time.
On a chilly, windy but quiet evening, Kristiana and I met up to have dinner and just to wander and take photos. When I met her at Chatelet, her first sentence was "let's go get our ears pierced!" We had talked about it before but it was an impromptu decision right there and then and so I lead her to a tattoo and piercing store nearby and 5 minutes later she descended from the spiral staircase with a red ear and a smile on her face. Hungry and severely malnourished (not), we decided to head to Rue Beaubourg to grab some pizza and eat it whilst watching the ice skating at Hôtel de Ville, then follow that off with a walk to Île St Louis for Berthillon glacés and chantilly with molleux au chocolat. We shared the little tea room with one other couple and traversed the little island in the dead silence, taking photos of each other. Kristiana insisted on taking photos of me also - which normally I decline but there is something about her that always boosts my confidence and I don't think I've truly had that with many other people, at least not here in Paris.
It is so weird to think that right in the centre of the city, it can be just you and the quiet, the warm luminescence of street lamps and distant muffled ambulance sirens being the only reminder of the fact that you are, in actuality, in the city at all. I crave the days when I am back here, remembering, and rediscovering, and again making new with whoever I may be sharing my life with, this wonderful place.
I always thought that Paris was an artist, musicians and writer's city. And that whilst I was an appreciator of these things, I would only be an onlooker and not a participator. But in a way - Paris has turned me into all these things. I write about it, I take photos and draw in my mind the sights and people, and after not singing for so long, I am always humming along to Piaf or Greco or Trenet completely unknowingly - and when I catch myself I smile. Paris turns you into something, whether it be obvious to others or just obvious to yourself.
