Lost in Paris

This would certainly be a quixotic, self-contradictory mission, but it was a mission nonetheless, and on my first day, I almost completely failed. Arriving across the Seine from Notre-Dame cathedral - just about the geographic center of the city - I was surrounded by neighborhoods I already knew: the Marais, the Latin Quarter, Bastille. And as I walked (and walked and walked) to escape them, jet lag, fatigue and the gray skies' miserable drizzle conspired to drain my energy. Lunch on the quiet ?le St.-Louis was a find - Gillardeau oysters and free-range chicken at the low-key Auberge de la Reine Blanche - but it went by like a blip. And that evening it took me five tries to find an available, affordable hotel room. At sunset, as I took my first shower of the day, I wondered how I could keep this up.

But the next day I figured it out. My legs rested (if still restless), I marched north up to Montmartre, the hilltop 18th Arrondissement neighborhood famous for windmills, cabarets and the Sacré-Coeur basilica. The sun was out and the air was cool, and though I thought I knew Montmartre, I kept finding minor-key surprises, like the high, serene walls around the Cimetière Montmartre and the plaques identifying the former homes of famous composers (here Berlioz, there Satie). When I rounded a corner onto the Rue St.-Vincent, a peaceful lane that ran up past the Clos de Montmartre vineyard, I had a flash: This is the street from that Yves Montand song I love! (I'm no scholar of postwar chansons; I heard it on the "Rushmore" soundtrack.)

So when, a few minutes later, I spied a storefront called Studios Paris advertising short-term rentals, I made a decision. Wandering Paris was fun; carrying all my belongings with me, rain or shine, was less so. But an apartment would be more than a glorified storage locker or a spot for an afternoon nap - it would be a little corner of Paris to claim as my own. Into Studios Paris I walked.

ONE hour later, I was looking out from the sole window of the Eagle's Nest, my newly renovated seventh-floor garret, at what might be the best view of Paris in Paris. From Montreuil in the east to the Bois de Boulogne, it was unobstructed: the towers, the domes, the mansard rooftops, the slight sinuous suggestion of the Seine. For the next six days, I would look at this view every morning as I drank my coffee. I'd look at this view at sunset, after returning from my wanderings for a shower, a rest and a glass of wine. I'd watch it in the driving rain, and at midnight, when searchlights spun around the Eiffel Tower. The apartment itself might be only 150 square feet, with a private toilet out in the hall, but my living room was all of Paris.

And in my backyard, Montmartre, which I realized I didn't know well at all. That first night, at the sloping corner where the Rue Garreau merges with the Rue Durantin, I watched a woman with impressively curly hair sit on a step, rolling a cigarette with utmost concentration. Just above her, in the tall and narrow second-story window of a flatiron-style building, another woman danced in front of a mirror, testing her outfit for the evening. And across the cobbled street, the lights of La Part des Anges - a cozy restaurant with outdoor tables where a mother rocked an infant - bathed the scene in a golden glow.

I stood there taking it in: the angles of the buildings, the contrast of the darkening sky and the soft electric lights, the energy and anticipation swelling here and everywhere across Paris. It was all the more thrilling for the fact that I had been here, at this precise intersection, who knows how many times before, but had never quite seen it this way, so alive, so pulsing with potential. Tourists, I knew, lurked nearby, and Parisian scenesters were massing outside bars down the street, too, but the magic of a great neighborhood in this city is that it feels as though it exists for you alone.

Of course, I was not yet ready to be in an exclusive relationship with Montmartre, and since this was Paris, what's a little flirting between neighborhoods? Perhaps I could find the same happiness, or better, in a place like the 15th Arrondissement, a mostly residential area in southwest Paris that has, as far as I can tell, not a single tourist attraction - no monuments, no cultural institutions (unless you count the Cordon Bleu).

What it does have is real, normal life, which can be as appealing as the "Winged Victory" in the Louvre. For an afternoon I zigzagged among eminently pleasant squares and small parks, resting here to eat a ham sandwich (procured from a boulangerie that placed ninth in last year's best baguette competition), pausing there to observe the goings-on. Well-dressed friends posing for wedding pictures. A 3-year-old riding a scooter under the supervision of his parents and grandparents. Joggers and sunbathers and teenagers speaking indecipherably slangy French. The sun shone warmly, and I drank an Orangina.