As I write this, I’m doing the opposite of what I’ve done every day for the last 33 days. I’m on a plane, and I’m not walking.
Oh, man, did I walk in Paris. I walked and walked and walked. I walked so much, my left heel is killing me.
Some days I walked 8 miles. One crazy day I walked 11 miles. Most days I walked at least 5 miles. Even on the days I tried not to walk (to rest my heel), I still walked more than 3 miles. It almost seemed impossible to walk fewer than 3 miles.
By the count of my iPhone, I walked almost 200 miles through the streets of Paris over the five weeks I was there. Actually, it was somewhere between 180 and 200 miles, so I’ll just round up.
Walking through Paris is one of my very favorite things to do. Discovering streets and areas and stores and restaurants and unexpected beauties.
Through it all, I wore the shoes at the top of this post. They are coated with the dust of Paris, the of Luxembourg Garden, of the Tuilleries Garden, of the Eiffel Tower, of the Metro, of Versailles, of the Louvre, of the Marais, of Montmartre, of the 2nd, of the 6th, of the 5th …
So like the Proclaimers, I have walked two hun-dred miles and I would walk two hun-dred more, just to be the one who walked four hun-dred miles to fall down at your door …
My Radical Sabbatical 