The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris

Description

The best way to know Paris? On foot — with John Baxter as your guide. Baxter, the Australian writer behind Immoveable Feast and We’ll Always Have Paris, has lived in Paris for decades and knows it the way locals do. Thrust into the unlikely role of a professional literary walking-tour guide, he turned his adopted city into a classroom without walls.

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World follows him on five lovingly crafted walks through the city’s most storied neighborhoods: grand boulevards and hidden alleys, quiet squares and corner cafés tourists never find. Along the way come the writers, artists, and eccentrics who made Paris Paris — from Hemingway’s haunts to hidden courtyards — history you can stroll through at three miles an hour.

Enchanting and erudite. The perfect book to read before — or instead of — a trip to Paris. Your feet will thank you.

What is the best way to know Paris? On foot. In The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, acclaimed author and long-time Paris resident John Baxter — the Australian writer behind Immoveable Feast and We’ll Always Have Paris — invites you to experience the French capital as a true flâneur.

Thrust into the unlikely role of a professional literary walking-tour guide, Baxter turned his adopted city into a classroom without walls. This enchanting memoir follows him on five lovingly crafted walks across the city’s most storied neighborhoods, from the grand boulevards to hidden alleys, quiet squares, and corner cafés tourists never find.

Along the way, Baxter layers personal anecdote with centuries of history: the ghosts of Hemingway and Joyce still haunting the Left Bank, the painters and poets who made Montparnasse a legend, the markets, bistros, and bookshops that keep the old Paris alive. Part travel guide, part memoir, part love letter, the book shows how slowing down to a walker’s pace lets a city reveal its soul.

Witty, erudite, and irresistibly readable, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World is the next best thing to a Paris vacation — and the perfect companion for your own first stroll. Lace up your shoes; the City of Light is waiting.