Quiet Corners and Winding Streets

Two out of my three favourite films are set in Paris.

It wasn’t something I’d given much thought to before but the answers came easily when posed by my friend on the upper floor of a dim pub in London’s Chinatown.

“Three films you could watch anytime?”

“Ratatouille, Midnight in Paris, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” I replied, without stopping to think.

Funny, I thought to myself as the red lanterns swayed in the breeze outside of the window. I don’t even like Paris all that much.

For all its beauty, I had never before taken to Paris.

Ironically, this was on the eve of a trip to the city. Not my first, by any means, although my first by myself. I hadn’t really chosen to go to Paris for Paris – I’d chosen it for its proximity and ease. I had one week I could take to myself – a workcation, if you will – and all I needed was somewhere that would facilitate peaceful, wandering mornings and cosy afternoons and evenings with my laptop.

The Paris of the films I loved was not the Paris I knew. The Paris I knew was bewildering in its maze of Métro stops and twisting streets, full of disdainful stares whether at my English tongue or my poor attempts at French. That was not to say that Paris is not beautiful and, certainly, I’d been there enough times that I could not dislike it all so much.

Perhaps, I had this sense that there was a Paris there for me to find. There was a corner to the city that would open its heart to me, and bring me the city that I loved in theory, but had never before been able to find.

As I got lost around the sprawling network of streets spilling out of République and the wheels of my suitcase dipped into cobblestones, a light summer’s rain began. I breathed in the smell of the boulangerie, squinting as the late morning sun hit the damp streets, and I wondered, could this be it?

Six flights of stairs from the ground level, I threw open the balcony doors of my Parisian apartment. My home for the week. The church across the road sat quietly against grey skies, the streets spilling out on either side. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the revving of a motor and a shouted exchanged. But up so high, I could have touched the clouds.

Away from the crush of the touristy left bank, here in the quiet corners and winding streets, I began to find my Paris. A book and a camera under my arm, I traced routes around the city that I had never come close to before in all of my visits. I fumbled through coffee orders, and I enjoyed the city in a way I had never before been able to.

I mused that I might even spend the entire week in Paris without so much as catching a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, before coming upon her imposing figure as I emerged from the Métro (from the wrong entrance, as usual). I paused and cast her a small smile. Later in the week, sipping tea on my balcony late at night, I would see her beams of light casting so wide as to reach me. But her ever-present figure was not a displeasure on my walks along the Seine, a familiar beacon of the city I had once thought Paris was, against the one I had now found.

The lack of tourists, in general, certainly didn’t hinder the experience. It was a Paris I was privileged to see, even the busiest of attractions surrounded by barely a smattering of foreigners. My fumbling French made it difficult to disguise myself as a local but as I sat for lunch, waiters seemed more pleased to see me there than I could ever remember as a visitor to the city before.

This flicker of something was more than a newfound love for a city I had never before come to terms with. It was also a reminder of all that I loved about Europe. Its old, history-laden streets and unexpected surprises tucked on every corner. The café-filled avenues, the sound of laughter and clattered plates twisting into the evening skies.

A familiar sight but somehow, different.

The stories woven into every step, a thousand ideas sizzling under my skin as I navigated my way around neighbourhoods. I came away desperate to write, to write everything and anything, to create surrounded by the life the city breathed. It had been so long since I felt so inspired.

On my last night in Paris, despite my exhausted feet from a long day of walking in the sun, I traced the streets back towards the river. I had attended a small concert in a church and the music stayed with me as I reached the water’s edge. A full moon shined overhead, its beams brushing the Seine. The edge of the river was lined with people, sharing food, drinking wine. It was still warm, the gentle breeze brushing my skin. I longed to join the patrons spilling out onto the streets, to tease at a glass of red wine and people-watch until the late hours.

But I had an early train to catch the next morning, and a long travel day ahead of that. When I walked to the Métro in the early light of the morning, there were still people outside the tabac, the night not yet over for them.

I have always said I would return to Europe one day, that Toronto was not a forever-home, so far from my family and from familiarity. But the idea of returning had still felt a distant dream, something for an undefined future that I could not yet see.

But as I boarded the train, the future did not feel so distant anymore. My heart belongs to that side of the Atlantic and so, before long, it will have to return.

My mother smiled when I told her as much. “I did say to your father, about this Paris thing,” she commented. “That it might light a spark.”

Consider it lit.