When my architect friend Westley visits Paris, he doesn't dawdle in the Louvre or climb the Eiffel Tower. Instead, he goes for a stroll. "I want to experience the city like the locals do," he once told me. "The idea of crowding around the Mona Lisa with a scrum of tourists just doesn't interest me." In other words, Westley is a boulevardier, a "flaneur," that great French word derived from the Old Norse verb "flana" or "to wander with no purpose."
But Westley and his ilk do have a purpose: they participate in a city by observing the quotidian flow of street life. Sometimes you can learn more about a place just by watching daily interactions along its thoroughfares than by visiting its monuments and museums, not that there's anything wrong with museums or monuments.
Initially, I tried to argue. "What? You've been to Paris five times and you've never visited the Louvre?" But as I grew older and visited the same cities over and over, I came to appreciate the value of wandering with eyes and ears open to the pulse of urban life.
And as Westley once explained, "Why spend a whole day in the British Museum? There's nothing British in it anyway. Britain happens outside it." Besides, he insists, exploring a city on foot costs nothing.
So what better place to observe a city's denizens, to reflect and discover and wander, than along some of the world's most beautiful boulevards, those wide, tree-lined streets humming with city life?
