By Michael Gebicki
I love Paris in the springtime. When the chestnut trees blossom along the Champs-Élysées and you can sit outside in the sunshine in the Luxembourg Garden, believe me, life doesn't get much sweeter. Summer is just peachy too, when the barges along the Quai des Tuileries are covered with geraniums and deck chairs and copies of Paris Match that flap in the wind.
Autumn, when Parisiennes parade in chic scarves, with a poodle or two in their handbags, is lovely. November, when the leaves of the chestnut trees turn to mush underfoot and a cold wind reddens the nose, is not my favourite. But then to catch a glimpse of the Ile de la Cité as I march across Pont des Arts, its prow emerging from the pearl light of a misty morning – there's nowhere else on earth I'd rather be.
An aerial shot of the glories of Paris.Credit: iStock
I love it at dawn, when an army of workmen descends to flood the gutters with water that will sweep the streets clean, marshalling the flow with sausages made from sand or bits of rolled carpet, and I love it to distraction in the evenings.
Paris for me is just that – one huge distraction. I go armed with good intentions. Weeks before, I will conscientiously trawl the internet, downloading articles on the best chocolate shops, the grooviest stationers, chic cafes, the latest hot brasserie.
Canal Saint-Martin.Credit: iStock
List in one hand, map in the other, I will leave my hotel in the morning fired with a sense of purpose but then the queues at the Musée d'Orsay will be long so I will wander along the Seine and waste half an hour browsing the bookshelves of Shakespeare & Co.
Then I'll find myself irresistibly attracted to the smells coming from Maison Kayser bakery, where I will scoff a delicious brioche which will spoil the lunch I had planned, so I'll head for an ice-cream then wander aimlessly through the Marais district – and things will go steadily downhill from there.
At night I will return to my hotel with blistered feet and unfulfilled intentions, completely content. One of my favourite bits of Paris is the Canal Saint-Martin, which runs above ground before broadening at the Bassin de la Villette, an artificial lake, with poetry, good looks and charm.
The one-time working class area in the 10th arrondissement once bore all the hallmarks of hard times, but a starring role in the film Amelie underlined its star potential. Today the cafes, patisseries, shabby-chic bars and quirky boutiques flanking the canal have become a hangout for fashionistas, philosophers and photographers in search of the romantic version of Paris, for which the canal's humpback iron footbridges and plane trees are ideal.
Eating lunch on the Latin Quarter’s rue Mouffetard.Credit: Alamy
Another delight is the Latin Quarter, one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, which juggles scruffiness with nobility and is home to some of the most prestigious universities, colleges and schools in France.
The quarter's rue Mouffetard is what everyone thinks of as backstreet Paris, a narrow lane lined with shops and cafes. It's also a favourite with literary-minded travellers, being the former home of George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway, who drank regularly at Place de la Contrescarpe, still ringed with cafes. This lay just outside the original walls of Paris, so no tax was levied on wine sold here and Place de la Contrescarpe has always been a boozers' hangout.
A room in the Latin Quarter or the Marais will put you right where the action is, but a hotel in a discreetly bourgeois suburb such as Neuilly-surSeine costs less, and you're just four Metro stops from the Arc de Triomphe.
Fast, cheap, clean, safe and efficient, the Metro is the key to Paris. Master it and you have the city at your feet, and Paris will reward your efforts with some unexpected delights. One day I came down the escalator at Châtelet station to be serenaded by a string quartet playing Mozart, and one of my favourite moments in all of Paris is when your Line 1 Metro train pulls into Bastille Station and you emerge into the sudden brilliance of the Port de l'Arsenal, filled with converted barges casting their jostling reflections across the water.
I have to confess that I am no authority on the delights of Paris. Even now, after many visits over four decades, there are serious omissions. I have never been up the Eiffel Tower, never visited the Musée Rodin or the Moulin Rouge, never spent an evening at the Crazy Horse cabaret nor sipped a coffee at Café de Flore, where a previous generation rubbed shoulders with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
As I said at the beginning, I've fallen in love with the place, and if you want to follow my bad example, you don't need an instruction manual.
Michael Gebicki travelled to Paris at his own expense.