it's not hard to find Metro ligne 2

My feet hurt as if each bare muscle and bone is balancing on its own misshapen pebble. When I tilt and flex my ankle, the stiff-rubber’d muscles in my shin yearn against each other. My heels hum high-pitched growls at me.

The hostel sounds fast, beat-ful electronica with repetitive wails and calls by a soulful – or angry – woman. She sounds like my frustrated arches.

*

Yesterday, I walked. I walked a giant circle from the hostel (north at Montmartre) west toward L’Arc de Triomphe. Along the way, I stopped at a marche and spent 10 minutes deciding on what cheese to buy for lunch. I decided on a tender, cream-yellow Aussee aux Moines, grabbed a couple of Boskoop Apples, and ate on a street-facing bench in front of a church. Very shortly, I was on my feet again. Eyes unyielding, feet skipped along. At the Arc, I turned southeast along the Champs, and walked on through La Jardine Tuilerie, right up to the pyramid of the Louvre.

Two years ago, a Chinaman snapped a photo of my mom and I in front of that pyramid. My hostelmates, pals Reia and Sarah from England, were probably inside. But I swerved right and visited le Musee d’Orsay, then kept walking along la rue St. Germain de Pres, busy Left Bank thoroughfare of shopping and cafes. How convenient! I could use a drink, and watching people is always on my agenda.

When the sky opened up and spilled, I was under the awning of Café Mondrian, so I sat down at one of the street-facing tables and asked for a menu. The waiter brought a café viennois, leveled by whipped cream, topped with cacao. I sat next to a French couple, the woman giggling and teasing the man about his chain-smoking. On the street, sheets of water slapped at the backs of cyclists, pooled in gutters and roared into drains. I watched Parisians line up like paper dolls under thin overhangs and construction covers. A portion of pedestrians had pulled out umbrellas and were still hustling along; the rest paused in their duties, keeping dry their duds.

Rain over, I walked on along St. Germain to l’Ile Saint Louis, a small island that mirrors the bigger one that Notre Dame dominates. I circled the island, photographing a woman sitting in a nook above her doorway, a red bicycle leaning against a yellow street sign, a pair of older boys in school uniforms sitting on a bench under a lone tree at the very end of the island.

I wandered over to the winding avenues of the right bank, in the South part of Le Marais. As the sun disappeared, I felt hunger, and a few corner turns later I found a falafel window, bright with French chatting and smiles. Jackpot. L’Il de Falafel, I realized: the best falafel in Paris, according to several guidebooks. Freshly fried, accompanied by forkfuls of splintered cucumbers and beets, drenched in tzatziki. Yep.

Finally, I shuffled on the Metro home, shins finally beginning to tire.