Flaneuse: Wandering the Empty Streets of Paris

Video & Photo Essay

My most meaningful experience of the city was not through its literature, its food or its museums…but through all that walking.

Lauren Elkin, Flaneuse

In Paris I walked. Especially during the pandemic, in the week before le confinement ended, when the streets were still empty and attestation papers were still required but there was a sense of impending freedom. I took my chances, leaving the neighborhood that had come to feel so small.

At the end of the day I would look at my Fitbit and discover I had walked 35,000 steps through the empty streets. I wore a pair of well-cushioned Pumas I had purchased in London and developed shin splints from all that walking. The only other time I had walked so many steps a day were on the trips we used to take with our son to Disneyland.

I walked in parks I knew and loved, and loved them more because they were empty. I walked in Montmartre, past the iconic La Maison Rose, past the walls covered in ivy. I walked to shuttered train stations and shuttered metros.

I walked to the Seine again and again, having grown desperate for a view of water. The authorities had taped off the stairs so no one could go down onto the quais, but the wind or a revolutionary Parisian had ripped the tape.

Of course, I was not the only one walking. More than once I saw The Gentleman with a Pet Dog. (I don’t think it was a Pomeranian, Chekhovian as that might have been).

After lockdown ended I walked farther and longer. I could not get enough of walking. It became an obsession.

In Paris I walked with no destination. Mostly I walked alone, although now and then I my husband or son would go with me. (Never more than two of us. During lockdown, we were only allowed to walk alone or in pairs). I walked and observed and breathed and loved the buildings and the silence. I discovered parks I’d never seen before, like this one, converted from an old train track.

and of course this one, which I’d walked a hundred times before…

Tuileries after lockdown

By August of 2020 the cars were back but the streets were often empty. Familiar pathways would be blocked by construction, and I would get turned around for miles. Though I always had some general sense of direction—thanks to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the river—I would have a difficult time finding my way to a street that would lead me home.

Anyway, here I was, in Paris. Where was home? Not the apartment on Rue de Courcelles. Not our house in California, the house another family was renting. Not the place where I grew up.

The only time I felt at home was when I was walking.

I have no idea how many walks I’ve been on…All my walks have been different, but looking back I see one common denominator: silence. Walking and silence belong together.

Erling Kagge, Walking: One Step at a Time

Sometimes I walked with a book in my bag, in case I wanted to sit down and rest, but I never wanted to rest. I’d had enough of resting. I wanted to walk.

In Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, Lauren Elikin writes that Hemingway spoke of Paris possessively, but that her own sense of Paris is one not of possession, but of belonging.

It is fair to say I felt neither for most of our time in Paris. In no way did I possess this city, and, until lockdown, those days of fear and silence, in no way did I belong there. I was not a tourist but an expat, existing in a kind of limbo—unable to enjoy Paris with a tourist's devotion, equally unable to inhabit Paris with a Parisian's resignation.

walking in Paris in late 2020

But then lockdown came. In Paris, walking, I felt I belonged.

Thank you for reading The Wandering Writer! If you enjoyed this post, you might also like these other posts from Paris: Adventures on rue de Seine, Cool Blue Morning, and Unfinished Business.

And if you are in the mood for something longer, you might enjoy one of my novels. You’ll find them on Amazon and Bookshop.org.