A walk from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon

Ah, Paris...

Having been to Paris a few times, but never really got my head around it, I decided to do something very Parisian and become a flâneur. So rather than taking the Metro from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon, let's walk the 5K (3 miles) instead.

We're unlikely to get lost as we'll be following the Canal Saint-Martin pretty much the whole way.

The Canal was dug out in the 1820s to provide clean safe drinking water to Parisians who were getting sick of the Seine and its cholera-loving poopy water. 

And it’s proved a popular place to potter ever since. Incidentally, if at any point along this route you start getting a feeling of deja vu, it may well be because it’s provided the perfect backdrop to a whole heap of films such as:

Mission: Impossible Fallout, Amélie, Samba, Hotel du Nord, If I Were a Rich Man, The Red Ibis, The Kind Words, The Layover, Épouse-moi, L'Atalante, L'enfant perdue, L'esquisse, La pierre et la corde and La dame de Monte Carlo.

And you may also be pleased to know that by going for a nice long stroll through Paris, we will be joining a very select club:

The flâneurs

This group of genteel urban explorers liked nothing better than to wander, loaf and lounge their way around Paris taking in the sights and sounds of the metropolis.

To help rookie flaneurs acclimatise to life in the slow lane, they were advised to bring along a pet tortoise.

As we go further, the canal seems to disappear.

That's because soon after the canal was cut, much of it was given a garden roof to let Parisians have a bit more space to loaf around without getting their feet wet.

The underground passage for boats also had another benefit.

In this rebellious city, troops could be moved around to quell any potential riots without the revolting peasants getting wind of where they were.

Now probably it’s most valuable function is as, you guessed it, a film set with around two shoots per week. 

Back above ground there are a series of parks.

and what French park wouldn't be complete without some locals playing Petanque.

Maybe it’s time to find a bench and watch the action. In the 1930s full-time flaneur Walter Benjamin, devoted time to meticulously observing the locals and created his masterpiece, the Arcades Project.

Described as one of the most important books never to have been written, its unfinished form still weighs in at a hefty one thousand pages. Maybe he could have dragged that around instead of a tortoise...

Luckily his life's work (and his life) has been summed up in a comic book.

Comic books, or bande dessinée, are a big thing in France and we pass a BD shop en-route.

So feel free to stroll in and pick something up for the journey.

Further along we pass a more sobering sight. The music venue, Bataclan, which became a focus for grief after an terrorist attack in 2015. 

But a year later, it was back up and running and became the place that showed the resilience of Parisians and their determination to never stop doing what they love.

And then we reach the Bastille which may be famous for being stormed to release its only, presumably lonely, prisoner, but these days it’s a nice place for people to meet up and maybe watch the skateboarders.

And so we’re on our final stretch where the canal re-emerges ready to join the river Seine. Time for a last stroll past the boats before popping over to the Gare de Lyon.

And there we are. We’ve crossed Paris and now we can catch a train to southern europe. 

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