With an apple I will astonish Paris. - Paul Cezanne

She was a spendthrift of the spirit, an American in Paris when, as Evelyn Waugh said, the going was good. - Anatole Boyard

And I haven’t even reached Paris yet, have I?? Alack. Wurra wurra.

Well, Reijo and Tuula, my Finnish friends, drove me to Southampton, from whence I caught a train to London Waterloo. I spent a restless night inside the wonder of the International Terminal’s everlasting charms (haunted by geography, of course … ), learning another important traveller’s lesson: one can indeed sleep on the terrazzo floor of a giant train station, empty except for you and the few other hardy souls with heads pillowed on bulging backpacks and nowhere else to go.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast. - of course, Ernest Hemingway

Paris. I stumbled bleary-eyed out of the train, blinking into the fluorescent lights of the Gare du Nord. Fumbling with the straps of my pack and trying to pretend there was a way that I could situate it on my hips that wouldn’t be uncomfortable, I emerged from the station into a grey afternoon. So this was Paris. The air was thick like wet cotton batting around the monochrome buildings, imposing facades, wrought iron and too many windows, and the door to the railway station was flanked by two guards with boots laced up their calves, in actual berets that probably didn’t look sissy because they were paired with matching automatic rifles (or whatever that kind of gun is called; I don’t pretend to be up on these things). As I trudged up the wide Boulevard de la Bleh Bluh, the drizzle became actual rain.

Paris is filled with Maghrebin, North African immigrants, and West Africans, Afrique noir, whose presence in Paris – and indeed throughout France, but particularly in Paris – parallels the Mexican dilemma in the US. Enough said. But you find the latter variety of them, in particular, close to any tourist spot. They crowd outside the larger Metro stations piping “Mahl-bro? Mahl-bro?” and I’m still not sure if they’re buying or selling. They want you to pay them: for directions to Sacre Cour, for little braided bracelets that come with a line of patter about how much they love America and how beautiful you are. For letting go of your arm if you pause long enough to let them grab it.

My first week in Paris, I shared a room at a hostel in Montmartre with five other travelers, all students, all English-speaking, a motley assortment of Americans, Australians, Canadians, Brits, and one Vietnamese kid who’d spent the last year in Germany and didn’t understand how the beer in Paris could be so lousy. Of course, I loved Montmartre – how could you not? The view of the city from Sacre Cour is unbelievable, as is the church itself. I went there the morning of my second day, and walked inside with a glut of other tourists as a service was in progress. A wimpled nun who didn’t look all that much older than me, half-hidden by the carved marble pulpit, was singing the Kyrie Eleison in a voice as high and plaintive-sweet as an Irish choirboy. Centuries of incense and devotion hung between the muttered prayers of the devout, and I walked out the door into my first view of la Tour Eiffel. It was quite a moment.

What did I do in Paris? I walked around alone a lot. I think I traversed the entire city with two weeks, a Streetwise map, my favorite Chacos, and a camera. If I can ever get the internet here to run at less than a crawl, I’ll get them onto flickr. Yes, Paris is an unbelievable city. I don’t think you get it, the first time you go. It takes some time, and some sinking in, I think, before all the sounds and strange words and signs and impressions slow down, before you can start seeing the droplets of personality and individual character among the tsunami that is … well, that is one’s first time anywhere. Paris. What a loaded word, right?

I saw the Eiffel Tower from every angle and vantage point, except from above. I visited the Louvre, the Musee Delacroix, the Musee Victor Hugo, the Musee Picasso. I stood at Napoleon’s Tomb, at the graves of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Jim Morrison’s graffitied edifice. In the Place de la Concorde, where blithe little Marie Antoinette was beheaded. I walked up the Champs Elysees watching the Arc du Triomphe grow from the size of a quarter until it towered over my head. I saw Les Halles and the Pompidou Centre, the Sorbonne, Les Deux Magots. I found the Rue du Bac and walked along it towards the Seine, thinking of Enjolras and the students at the barricades, of Javert. I found the Rue Foucault. I took hazy pictures of the stained-glass windows of Ste. Chapelle, and I was quietly stunned by my own and genuine awe each time I saw Notre Dame.

So many gardens. The French like their flowers, like their language, in a riot of color that is combed and tamed in neat beds and ordered paths. Baroque splendor, rigorously controlled. The Jardin des Plantes, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the bourgeois but lovely Parc Monceau. I strolled through the Tuillieries licking a glace de noisette and pretending I was going to meet my lover.

If England is grey then Paris is beige. It’s loaded with history and culture and civility and politesse, with students and tourists and jaded Parisians, who really do wear black and smoke all the time. It can be quite cold in Paris, in August. I immediately got a wretched chest cold that I hung onto until about three days ago. I’d wake up hacking in Montmartre and kept finding myself wishing I was in Spain.

In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent. - Roman Polanski

In French, when someone says, “Merci,” the general answer is “De rien.” Nothing at all. In Toulouse, in the South of France, you’ll hear, far more often, “Avec plaisir.” With pleasure. In Paris, they say, “Je vous en prie.” It’s a city of reflexive hubris. A place where people wear sunglasses all the time, and ignore the rain.