THAT'S an Audrey Hepburn quote in the headline. Can't say I disagree. I've not been to Paris as much as I've visited other, less expensive places. But it's worth going. Always. The city offers so much more there than the obvious. And the obvious isn't half bad.
One reason for going is the opportunity to see the Eiffel Tower in the flesh. Or should that be in the steel? It looms from all sorts of vantage points, day and night, through a gap in the trees, from the Seine and through the windows of a Metro carriage.
Then there's this place. I usually don't photograph religious sites because god-bothering of all kinds has led to so much evil. I made an exception for Notre Dame now that it's been repaired - spire and all - in the wake of the April 2019 fire. But I was determined not to make it look pretty.
It's more difficult to unprettify Sacré-Cœur. I realise it's another religious building, but it's also the site where the Paris Commune started in March 1871. Once the bastards murdered the uprisers, they built this there to "expiate the crimes of the Commune".
But there's much more to this magical city than Gustav Effeil's masterpiece and cathedrals. For instance, a few steps from Sacré-Cœur you will find Le Passe-Muraille: the Man Who Walked Through Walls. It's a bronze sculpture inspired by a short story written in 1943 by Marcel Aymé about a lowly clerk, Dutilleul, who realises he is able to walk through walls. Until, as he is doing exactly that, his super power vanishes.
We're in Montmartre, famously home to Van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Piaf and Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted the Moulin Rouge, a neighbourhood landmark. That was then, but it remains a fine place for a spot of psychogeography. Psycho what? Guy Debord, the Marxist thinker, defined the practice as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals". Psychogeography, to the rest of us, is essentially taking a walk with no particularly place to go. That's a joy in Montmartre. You can come for the sunsets ...
... and for the streets ...
... and for the street art.
But wait. There's more. The Barbecue Brass Band will have you dancing into the night with their addictive brand of New Orleans second line bluesy jazz. We experienced them aboard a boat tootling around the Seine. Or on une croisière arrosée. That's a booze cruise to you and me.
Anyone for tennis? I know I've already published a photo essay on the French Open. But a better edit, with different software, of the photograph of Coco Gauff (below right) revealed that I had captured the flight of the ball.
The first time I saw one of these - the doorhandle inside a Metro carriage - I didn't have the first clue what to do with it. Back then, they didn't come with a diagram telling you to flip the handle upward to makegood your escape. Or maybe they did and I didn't see it in my panic to alight before the train jolted onward.
Still on transport matters, Paris is among the world's great cycling cities. That was the case even before Anne Hidalgo, the former mayor, added more than 1,000 kilometres of bike lanes. As you can see from these examples, Parisians aren't picky about their bicycles in a lycra loving sense. But, as you can also see, they do need them to be beautiful. An ugly bike - like the type we see so often in Cape Town - is rare here.
This sign means no vehicles besides bicycles are legally allowed on this street, and there are many of them - bikes as well as streets like this. Better yet, they treat pedestrians with respect. Bliss.
Similarly, ugly attitudes don't seem to exist. You've heard Parisians are rude? Bullshit. Accidentally bump into someone on the street and a pardon! will be issued forthwith. People offer to carry heavy bags up stairs for perfect strangers should they look as if they might not manage. Sit next to a 12-year-old on the Metro and they will smile a polite bonjour. Younger people readily give up their seats to those who are older, or to others who look like they might need to get off their feet. There's a word for this: civilisation! And then you take a walk in a park and a bunch of teenagers entertain the rest of us without asking for money or attention or anything else.
I've recently discovered a hero I didn't know I needed to have. Lee Miller went from photographer's model to artist's muse to photographer to chronicler of war atrocities in vivid words and pictures to gourmet cook. When I learnt there was a major exhibition of her life and work at Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, I didn't blink before buying a ticket. I was not disappointed.
Paris! If you tire from all it offers - and it is a lot - look up.
Still tired? Look higher still.
© 2026 Telford Vice. Words and photographs.