Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

My main focus - just now - is to keep my lips sealed, while I lie, floating on my back, in the middle of the Canal St Martin in Paris. The place I just duck into is absolutely no azure swimming pool, but rather an industrial canal cut through the city center, where swimming for the last hundred years has been strictly forbidden And for good reasons! The river flowing through Paris has been severely polluted, making it possible to contract skin infections, or develop gastroenteritis if you ingest the water. Not speaking of leptospirosis, or rat disease, which is transmitted via rat corpses or urine!   In lieu of all this - why am I this Sunday splashing around in the canal with a happy group of Parisians? One thing is the heat, but the main reason is: Because we actually can! For the last hundred years wild swimming in Paris waters has been strictly forbidden under pain of a fine (or pain of sickness!), but this Sunday and in this small part of the Canal St Martin, it is allowed for...

Yesterday, we were going to the Fondation Le Corbusier. On our way to this museum, which lies in the posh Paris neighborhood of Auteuil, we passed row upon row of centuries-old homes with bisque stone facades and quiet courtyards - until we stumbled upon a small street, which stopped us in our tracks. A short, private cul-de-sac with five giant cubist townhouses - the Rue Mallet-Stevens. We gazed up at whitewashed facades, sinuous curves, and floor-to-ceiling windows, and we felt like we had stepped into a living architectural exhibit from the interwar period, where - even by today's standards - each house seems as modern as the next. When we googled the street, it turned out that it is named after a now almost forgotten architect, Robert Mallet-Stevens, who back in the 1920s designed all five houses for a group of wealthy bohemians, who embraced the clean lines and geometric forms of the newly developed Art Deco architecture. Robert Mallet-Ste...

The stench is the first thing that I notice as I enter the dark underworld of the Petite Ceinture, the long-abandoned more than 150-year-old railway line which traces the 32-kilometer perimeter of Paris. Some parts of the Petite Ceinture are now open to the public, but the kilometer-long tunnels are barred and you have to be sneaky if you want to explore them. I found a way in (see below), where the dank air smelled of urine, rot, and abandonment. It was the smell of a place forgotten. Moving further on, the beam of the torch on my mobile creates a bubble of light in the almost impenetrable darkness. It flashes at the stone walls on either side, and the circle of light picks out tags, scribblings, and crude drawings, as this abandoned place has probably for almost a century been witness to furtive meetings, drug use, rough sleeping, and teenage gatherings. I walk slowly, wary of deep holes in the floor and obstructions on the tracks. Everything...