Mainly what we do is walk.
Part of the joy of our endless fugue through Europe is walking, just walking. Cities and countryside. The pleasure is being startled by ineffable beauty. You turn a corner in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria and see the Tsarevets Fotress on the hilltop.https://chosenfugue.xyz/2019/06/18/into-the-cyrillic-part-1-bulgaria-interior/
You leave the train station in Florence, walk a few blocks, enter the Piazza del Duomo and the Cathedral, Giotto’s Campanile and Baptistery of St. John are right in front of you. You understand the word stunning. https://chosenfugue.xyz/2023/04/11/frenzied-firenze/ It is not just the main attractions, but also the everyday beauties you pass as you walk.
New York City, San Francisco (even with the hills) are great walking cities, but Paris is better than all of them. The art of flaneur was invented in and for Paris.
The expanse, the history, the elegance just leads you to wander. We didn’t go to any museums, no fancy restaurants, no tours, no trip up the Eiffel Tower.
Walking through Paris, is following the footsteps of icons like Simone de Bouvier & Sartre, Serge Gainsbourg, Truffaut, Baudelaire, Chopin, Collette, Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde and countless others.
So we followed them to Montmartre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmartre_Cemetery, Montparnasse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse_Cemetery and Père-Lachaise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Père_Lachaise_Cemetery. We tend to almost always end up at the cemeteries. Art and history become tangible. A culture becomes known. Genoa’s cemetery is a magnificent sculpture gallery, https://chosenfugue.xyz/2023/03/12/leaning-in/ Timsaura’s full of anger https://chosenfugue.xyz/2019/07/12/timisoara-the-revolution-will-not-be-televised/and Bosnia’s was in pain. https://chosenfugue.xyz/2018/11/14/croatia-2-the-war-and-mostar/ Paris’s cemeteries are a stroll through Western cultural history.
After our first fugue from 2018-2020, it seemed odd that we had not really explored the heavyweights- Italy and France. We checked off Italy in January 2024 and it just kind of felt like, oh now we should finish up France, we did not expect how great these five weeks would be with vast differences between regions, between villages, towns and cities. Time traveling from cave paintings to roman amphitheaters to Haussmannian boulevards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eugène_Haussmann to the Eurostar cross channel trains. Emotionally, spiritually and artistically, satisfying
Paris was the fitting end of our tour de France. We will be back.
Chosen Fugue 