When lunch time approaches and my stomach starts rumbling, I make my way outside, and it hits me that I’ve never walked the streets of Paris on my own. When I was here with Rebecca we went everywhere together. On all the trips we undertook, we set out on our discoveries arm in arm. But this is not just a trip, I remind myself. This is me visiting the woman I fell in love with. Everything about this is the opposite of a city trip with a partner you’ve been with forever.

I head to the Métro and decide to go to the Hotel de Ville stop. Have a spot of lunch in Le Marais, where I have at least been before, then explore the Centre Pompidou, until Camille knocks off work. “Five on the dot, for you,” she assured me before she left this morning.

It’s odd to rely on public transport to get around. In Sydney, I’m so used to taking my car—and sitting in traffic. The Paris Métro isn’t the cleanest and the cars are old and look a bit worn. Maybe I should have gone for an Uber after all. Or maybe I should rent a car, which Camille advised me against because the inner-city traffic is crazy pretty much every time of day. She told me I was very welcome to take her bicycle. Maybe tomorrow I will.

On the Métro, the diversity of people is perplexing. Young, old. Tourists from every corner of the world. Announcements in Chinese and Japanese. I always believed Sydney was a very worldly city, but this is something else.

Because the underground was so dark and dank, when I emerge from the stairs at Hotel de Ville, the day seems even brighter than before. I look around, at the Rue de Rivoli stretching out to my left and right, and consider that Paris even manages to make its shopping streets look attractive—not an easy feat. But I’m not interested in shopping. I want to find out what it feels like to wander through this city on my own, to gauge whether I could ever feel at home here.

What started as a seed of a thought in the back of my brain, is beginning to make its way forward. It’s not a well-formed thought just yet. Just a sense of something making its presence known in my mind, lurking at the edges of my consciousness.

I walk and I take it all in eagerly. The way the French speak, with so much music in their tone of voice. The elegance of the waiter when I have lunch. How you never have to order anything from the counter here, but everything is brought to you. The way French women dress, which makes me think I should go shopping after all.