Some go to La Coupole, the 87-year-old Art Deco brasserie in Montparnasse, to commune with friends; others, to dine with ghosts — Picasso, Piaf, Sartre, all former patrons. I went alone, to live in the present.
I sliced through an oyster with my cocktail fork, loosening it from its shell. A pulpy Utah Beach, it was brimming with lemon juice and its own slightly salty liquor. I lifted it with a thumb and forefinger, and tilted it to my lips.
It was early spring in Paris. To my left, a white-haired woman with red lipstick disappeared behind a newspaper. To my right, a man and a woman flirted over starters. We were at the center of one of the last sprawling brasseries of the 1920s, where a large basin into which the artists’ model Kiki de Montparnasse used to climb has been replaced with a comparatively demure sculpture of a couple forming an orb with their outstretched limbs. A waiter paused at my table to rotate the platter of oysters so that the overturned shells faced the empty chair across from me.
“Voilà,” he said.
I leaned back against the banquette, bathed in the whir of nearby tête-à-têtes, sipping my Chablis.
It was easy in Paris to surrender to the moment. But why? What alchemy transmuted ordinary activities, be it a walk across a bridge or the unwrapping of butter, into a pleasure? My default speed in New York is “hurtle,” yet in Paris I dragged the edge of a fork across an oyster with a care better suited to sliding a bow across a violin.
This was not simply because I was in Paris, though it has long held a kind of magic for many Americans. It was because I was there on my own. In a city that has been perfecting beauty since the reign of Napoleon III, there are innumerable sensual details — patterns, textures, colors, sounds — that can be diluted, even missed, when chattering with someone or collaborating on an itinerary. Alone one becomes acutely aware of the hollow clack of pétanque balls in a park; the patina of Maillol’s bronze “Baigneuse se Coiffant” that makes her look wet even on a cloudless day in the Tuileries; how each of the empty wine bottles beside sidewalk recycling bins is the embodiment of someone’s good time. There is a Paris that deeply rewards the solo traveler.
Indeed, the city has a centuries-old tradition of solo exploration, personified by the flâneur, or stroller. Flânerie is, in its purest form, a goal-less pursuit, though for some it evolved into a purposeful art: Walking and observing became a method of understanding a city, an age. Baudelaire described the flâneur as a passionate spectator, one who was fond of “botanizing on the asphalt,” as the essayist Walter Benjamin would later put it. Typically, it was a man. No longer.
To be a sidewalk botanist, one must walk. But please, no sneakers. C’est Paris. A fashion journalist friend suggested I be slightly transgressive and don a men’s shoe. A nod to my predecessors. This is how I came to average 20 miles a day in bronze cap-toe oxfords.
I sliced through an oyster with my cocktail fork, loosening it from its shell. A pulpy Utah Beach, it was brimming with lemon juice and its own slightly salty liquor. I lifted it with a thumb and forefinger, and tilted it to my lips.It was early spring in Paris. To my left, a white-haired woman with red lipstick disappeared behind a newspaper. To my right, a man and a woman flirted over starters. We were at the center of one of the last sprawling brasseries of the 1920s, where a large basin into which the artists’ model Kiki de Montparnasse used to climb has been replaced with a comparatively demure sculpture of a couple forming an orb with their outstretched limbs. A waiter paused at my table to rotate the platter of oysters so that the overturned shells faced the empty chair across from me.
“Voilà,” he said.
I leaned back against the banquette, bathed in the whir of nearby tête-à-têtes, sipping my Chablis.
It was easy in Paris to surrender to the moment. But why? What alchemy transmuted ordinary activities, be it a walk across a bridge or the unwrapping of butter, into a pleasure? My default speed in New York is “hurtle,” yet in Paris I dragged the edge of a fork across an oyster with a care better suited to sliding a bow across a violin.
This was not simply because I was in Paris, though it has long held a kind of magic for many Americans. It was because I was there on my own. In a city that has been perfecting beauty since the reign of Napoleon III, there are innumerable sensual details — patterns, textures, colors, sounds — that can be diluted, even missed, when chattering with someone or collaborating on an itinerary. Alone one becomes acutely aware of the hollow clack of pétanque balls in a park; the patina of Maillol’s bronze “Baigneuse se Coiffant” that makes her look wet even on a cloudless day in the Tuileries; how each of the empty wine bottles beside sidewalk recycling bins is the embodiment of someone’s good time. There is a Paris that deeply rewards the solo traveler.
Indeed, the city has a centuries-old tradition of solo exploration, personified by the flâneur, or stroller. Flânerie is, in its purest form, a goal-less pursuit, though for some it evolved into a purposeful art: Walking and observing became a method of understanding a city, an age. Baudelaire described the flâneur as a passionate spectator, one who was fond of “botanizing on the asphalt,” as the essayist Walter Benjamin would later put it. Typically, it was a man. No longer.
To be a sidewalk botanist, one must walk. But please, no sneakers. C’est Paris. A fashion journalist friend suggested I be slightly transgressive and don a men’s shoe. A nod to my predecessors. This is how I came to average 20 miles a day in bronze cap-toe oxfords.
by Stephanie Rosenbloom, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Agnes Dherbeys for The New York Times
