Discovering the Great Cities of the World on Foot

It might be a while since you have travelled to a big city, and you’re anxious to discover something new in the places you’ve seen before, like Paris, London, Rome, San Francisco, or New York. If you’re getting ready to travel to Paris, for example, you may have checked out some of the popular guidebooks like Fodor’s Paris or visited the Frommer’s travel website, or maybe you’ve read the travel reviews at Tripadvisor. But what will you miss if you just know about the “must-see” tourist sites?

I recently went to Paris, my first trip abroad in several years. Paris is one of the best walking cities in the world. It is now thronged with tourists again, most hurrying to see the major sites. But what about the hidden, out-of-the-way places, the smaller museums, and the forgotten historic sites that most tourists don’t see? The best way I’ve always found to encounter such places is by walking the streets of the city. In French, a person who strolls the streets of a city is known as a “flaneur” and there is a tradition of writers who walk the streets of Paris to get to know the city. Before your trip to Paris, you can take an imaginary stroll through the streets by reading the work of a modern flaneur - Eric Hazan - who wrote A Walk Through Paris to guide readers through the past and present of the city’s streets.

Of course, when you get there you can just pick a starting point in the city and start walking. You are likely to encounter new streets, new neighborhoods, new restaurants, and new museums that you haven’t seen before. It takes a lot of time to explore a big city like Paris, but it’s very rewarding. You never know when you will come across the next forgotten little street or charming little park.

What if you don’t have the time to be a dedicated flaneur? Should you just give up and take a bus tour? Not at all! There are many types of walking guides dedicated to getting you started on exploring your destination in no time! Walking guides like Walking Paris – the Best of the City give suggested walking itineraries that will help you explore different parts of the city. If you want to start walking through a city a bit closer to home, New York in Stride is your guide to walks through streets, parks, squares, and monuments. Also, Moon publishes walking guides for several cities such as London Walks and Rome Walks.

If you’re trying to walk to discover hidden, out of the way places that you can encounter on your perambulations, there’s a whole series of guidebooks devoted to this - the Secret guides. I find that these books always give me good stopping points for my walks. Secret Paris directs you to the tucked-away historical landmarks, small but charming museums, and quaint streets in Paris that will enrich your journey. Similar guides exist for other cities too, as diverse as Venice, Mexico City, and Brooklyn. Another good way to get points of interest for your walks are guides to literary landmarks, like Fictional London. This book guides you to all the real-life locations frequented by your favorite fictional characters of English literature.

You don’t necessarily need a walking guide with a certain number of fixed itineraries to start you on your way. One of the best ways to get inspiration for your walks is to read the memoirs of other travelers and expatriates. For Paris, one of the great contemporary flaneurs is the Australian John Baxter, who wrote Five Nights in Paris and A Year in Paris about his wanderings in the City of Light. Another charming city walkabout is Gary Kamiya’s Cool Grey City of Love, which features reflections about the author’s walks around many different historic neighborhoods and locations in San Francisco. And The Other Paris by Luc Sante describes how the poor and working-class neighborhoods of historic Paris have changed over the centuries, and reveals the secrets of the demolished medieval alleyways and buried streams that lie beneath today’s broad boulevards.

So, before your next trip, make a point of checking out books like these. They’re guaranteed to spark your imagination, and inspire you to explore the backstreets and hidden byways of the world’s great cities, that contain so many hidden treasures.

- by Michael, West Windsor Branch