paris walkabout... the last step

We leave the constancy of summer in Croatia for autumn in Paris, our last destination on this four-month odyssey. As we emerge from the labyrinthine underworld of the metro on to 'Pont Neuf', the oldest bridge in Paris, the sun shines on the Seine.
 

We drag the bags over cobblestones to our historic hotel on the 'Isle de la Cite', in the middle of the river. 'Hotel Henri 4' looks the same as it did when we stayed here sixteen years ago. We ascend the same spiral staircase to our room on the fourth floor overlooking the Place Dauphine. The trees are smaller, their bluish leaves rusting at the edges; apparently the stately old trees became diseased and had to be replaced.
 

But the town houses surrounding the triangular place are just as elegant with their wrought iron balconies and there are several new cafes with canvas awnings where people lunch at sunny tables. Before unpacking we hurry over to 'La Rose de France' to grab the last table.

An American couple at the next table has rented an apartment here for a month. ''My wife has been here at least thirty times,'' says the husband with sad brown eyes beneath dark bushy eyebrows. The wife is blonde and animated and looks younger than her age. ''I love Paris,'' she says. ''I walk every morning.'' She talks a lot and glares at her husband when he tries to say anything. ''We both can't talk at once,'' she snarls.

She goes to meet a friend for afternoon tea, but the husband stays to chat over a coffee.

''We would kill each other if we stayed together all day,'' he says with disarming honesty. ''My wife shops all day. I visit musees. There is a cinema that shows old American movies.''

After he leaves I say to Dave, ''They hate each other. We are not that bad are we?'' He doesn't need to answer. We are in Paris, the city of love.

Hand in hand we wander the streets of the Isle, awed by the grand buildings and monuments, the grim gargoyles of Notre Dame. On impulse we buy tickets for a classical music concert at Sainte Chapelle, which has an impossibly high vaulted ceiling and walls of intricate stained glass. I feel as if I am sitting inside a kaleidoscope or a gigantic jewellery box with the familiar sounds of Vivaldi's Four Seasons filling the space.
 

Winter 1983. Our first visit to Paris. The trees were bare but festooned with Christmas lights along the Champs Elysees. The air was cold but clear and bright. Inside the cafes and restaurants, crowded with people, it was warm and light. We stayed in an attic room in a seedy hotel which smelt of curry and turned into a brothel at night, but we were young and in love and everything was wonderful.

It was early spring when we returned to Paris for Dave's 50^th birthday. Not as young but still hungry for life. We thrilled at Rodin's sculptures and the 'Monets' in the Musee D'Orsay and the cafes on the Left Bank. I searched out cafes where Sartre and Beauvoir. and their intellectual friends philosophised over coffee and cigarettes and had passionate love affairs. What a romantic I was.

How innocent. How naive. 
  

I wonder what autumn in Paris will bring, as Vivaldi's exquisite evocation of the seasons ends bringing the audience to its feet.

We celebrate with a supper of crepes and French champagne; we have been up since 3am in Dubrovnik so haul ourselves up the four flights of stairs and collapse into bed, shutting the windows to silence the night.

After a couple of hours I wake. A faint unpleasant smell which I detected earlier is now nauseating. It smells like a latrine or cat piss. I cover my face with the sheet but can't sleep all night.

I lean out of the window over the railing and inhale the night air. Ambulance sirens sound continuously.

When I approach the matronly woman at reception the following morning, she flushes red with anger and says they have never had such a complaint, they are fully booked, they cannot change our room, they will keep the money for nine nights if we go to another hotel. ''Madame,'' she says, ''I think you just want to leave this hotel. Take it up with the manager.'' This is when I burst into tears and run up four flights of stairs. For the first time on our travels, I wish I was wealthy and staying in a luxury hotel. Then I remember the homeless man sleeping rough on the stone bench of Pont Neuf and I am grateful for a comfortable bed and hot water and white towels.
 

We leave the windows wide open and go out walking. Within half an hour it is raining and we are unprepared. It rains incessantly all day; we are soaked to the skin, stopping for an hour or so in cafes to dry off a little. It isn't until it rains that you realise how little shelter there is in Paris. People sit at cafes under canvas awnings heavy with water [one opposite our place splits over night] but the water drips on passing pedestrians.

View of the receding storm from the Jardin des Tuileries

We find Victor Hugo's house and musee, which Aung San Suu Kyi visited earlier in the year and wrote that she was moved by Victor's words: 'we are not travellers in life, we are wanderers'. The words resonate with me too, particularly on this damp cold day, as we aimlessly drift like drowned rats. We may have maps and plans, but in the end there is no destination. Only the arrival and departure.

Not travellers. Wanderers.
 

Heading through autumn... with a police escort

Back at the hotel, our carpet has been shampooed so we decide to stay. The smell is less acrid, but Paris remains cold and damp. I love Paris in the springtime but decidedly NOT in the fall.

Later that night, Dave is ill with a gastric attack, groaning on the bathroom floor, too weak to move. I cover him with a blanket and go to a pharmacy for anti nausea medication; he spends the next day in bed.
 

Lunching alone in another cafe on our square, I speak with two young American girls about our trip. One with long dark hair and a soft southern drawl asks where I am travelling from. ''Australia,'' I say.

''Oh, we met so many Australians in Berlin. Are you on, what do you call it, 'walkabout'?''

''Well, I guess you could say that. But it is an expression we use to describe the itinerant lifestyle of some traditional indigenous Australians.'' I smile. I like the idea.

Wanderers. On walkabout. In Paris. That's us.
 

All week we walk about Paris. It is much busier and noisier and less 'chic' than we recall it. There are red double decker tourist buses and river cruisers and long queues everywhere. We queue for an hour to catch the lift up the Eiffel Tower where the panoramas don't disappoint; we visit Sacre Cour and wander the streets of Montmarte.
 

Our decent through one of the legs of the 'Tour Eiffel'

 

Another highlight is a jazz concert at famous Jazz-Club on the Right Bank, where the trombonist, Sebastien Llado, plays McCartney's haunting 'Blackbird' on a conch shell.
 

There are still cosy restaurants on the Left Bank serving excellent traditional French cuisine, but now the waiters will speak in English. Little galleries sell 'primitive' art, photography and jewellery to the well-heeled. I glance down at Old Dog's trusty brown leather lace-ups, his only footwear for four months. Definitely not in the well heeled category.

He can't understand why I have acquired four new pairs of shoes. One is thongs. They don't count, I tell him.
 

Palais Royal - Musee du Louvre

When we are too tired to walk I read 'The Paris Wife', the fictionalised account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage in the early 1920's when Paris was the place to be for artists, writers and intellectuals. And what a wild old time they had here in the Jazz Age.
 

When the sun reappears for the weekend, the Seine turns from grey to green and young people picnic on the 'quais'. We walk in the parks of Paris, watching the Parisiennes at play. This is where I see Paris, the city of love. Young couples, gay or straight, cuddle on benches or lie on the grass. Handsome young French papas look lovingly at their children, hold their hands and lift them on to their shoulders. [I remember the song, ''Oh my papa, to me you are so wonderful,'' and think of my own father who spent so much time with us as children.] Grandmothers laugh as their little cherubs chase the pigeons. Young women and old men walk their dogs.
 

 
Children sail boats on the lakes, ride ponies, jump on trampolines and throw balls. Adults jog, roller-blade, play petanque, paint the autumnal trees, play chess, stroll, sit, read or sleep in the sun in the many green metal chairs which are provided, eat or drink at the cafes, admire the flowers and statues or sculptures or queue for ice-creams.
 

We see an exhibition about the 18^th century explorer/ botanist, de Bouganville at the Luxembourg Jardins. There are examples of the exotic plants which he [and other explorers like James Cook] brought back from far away places.
 

Oh no... not again!

It gets me thinking again about why we travel [or wander or go walkabout]. Looking through my posts I see that the reasons are as multifarious as are human beings. Some are motivated by curiosity, the desire to explore, to discover, to make maps, to measure and to categorise. Some seek beauty or pleasure. Some are escaping boredom or grief or persecution or war or economic hardship. Some want to connect with nature; some to learn a language or study another culture and its history. Some to better know this planet and its people. Some are in search of new cuisine, better weather or new clothes.

We travel to connect or reconnect with people. To stimulate our creative expression.
 

Looking through my blog posts, I see that I wander for many of these reasons, but the most important is expressed most eloquently in the words of Caryl Phillips in his essays, 'Necessary Journeys' [2004] and 'Blood' [1997]:

''I want to travel around Europe and write...about what I see, about who I talk to, and about what I'm thinking.''

and

''Writing helps to build a bridge across the space between one's own private world and the external world in which we all have to continue to live.''

I get it!

And so does the Old Dog.
 

 

THE END