Under moonlight, a couple stroll arm in arm along the Seine, the Eiffel Tower looming in the background. This is what Paris is about. The most romantic city on earth: a place for young lovers to fall deeper and for older ones to rediscover what they saw in the first place.
Sickening, isn't it?
You see, amongst all those couples drooling down each others' faces, slipping rings on fingers and cooing inanities, there are some single people in Paris. And, mercifully, there is room for the lovelorn, the lonely and the recently dumped in this city of held hands and tangling tongues.
The Eiffel Tower is a prime example. It's the home of many a proposal, but do those newly engaged lovebirds have any idea what they could be putting themselves through? The Tower wasn't universally popular when it was built, and the only reason it survived was that it doubled as a useful telecommunications mast. Today it is riddled with antennas at the top, meaning that it is channelling all manner of radio waves. If you believe the scaremongers, this would naturally make it one great, big cancer magnet. And there's nothing romantic about chemotherapy.
Then there's the Seine, that majestic river that meanders through the centre of the city. Well, for hundreds of years, this was full of sewage, with the Parisiens using it both as their primary source of drinking water and toilet. Whilst it is slowly clearing up and plans are in place to protect it, the Seine is still not the place for a casual swim.
You learn this at what is unquestionably the city's least romantic attraction. Any suitor who decided to take the apple of his eye on a tour of the sewers (+ 33 1 5368 2781, www.egouts.idf.st) would soon find himself buying microwave meals for one, a fact that makes it absolutely ideal for anyone trying to ignore a broken heart.
Laid out along the dripping pipes over damp floors is the story of the city's water supply. The tale traces where it comes from, where it goes to, and what's done with it once it has been used. Who would have guessed that the decantation and biological treatment process could be quite so gripping? The cobwebbed tunnels are suitably claustrophobic, whilst the shaky grilles you walk on feel like they could give way at any moment, sending you sliding into the sloshing streams of gunk underfoot. Ugh … it looks like Satan's bathtub down there.
On the way through you get to see the machines used to keep the sewers going, and they are distinctly unglamorous buckets of rust. Depending on the size of the waterway, a number of techniques are used. The primary one is pumping more water in to push the rest of it along, but the nasty stuff still has to be scraped off the bottom of the pipes. That's where dredging machines and boats come in. Some poor souls have to sit all day inside these things, watching them churn up all manner of gunk. Pleasure cruising it is not.
The magical misery tour continues at the perfect place to avoid lip-locking sweethearts; a good old war museum. The Musée de l'Armée (+33 1 4442 3877, www.invalides.org) is unspeakably vast. It is primarily dedicated to the story of Charles De Gaulle and a couple of his mates hopping across the English Channel and single-handedly winning the Second World War, but there are healthy doses of senseless brutality mixed in with somewhat biased tales of heroism.
For the large part, it is the story of men stabbing, hacking and shooting each other to death through the ages. The ancient warfare department has a bewildering array of knives, swords, daggers and guns, with shields and armour providing the case for the defence. It's room after room of lethal weaponry, some of it dating back as far as the 13th century.
The final stop on this unrelenting singleton's tour of grief, squalor and melancholy is, fittingly, a graveyard. The Père Lachaise cemetery (www.pere-lachaise.com) in the 11th arrondissement is something of a status symbol; anyone who is anyone is buried here.
The cemetery has become a rather ghoulish attraction, with accountants in their suits and ties coming to pay homage to Jim Morrison in a bid to recapture the days when they lived a little. Fresh flowers still adorn the musician's rather plain headstone, and it's impossible to miss if you just follow the huddle.
The roll call includes Oscar Wilde, and you have to spare a thought for his neighbour. The Irish wit's grave, with its gaudy stone angel, tribute messages and lipstick marks Père Lachaise's biggest pilgrimage spot. As the stone is hugged, kissed and photographed, not even a second glance is spared for the fallen around it.
These include William Guilleminot. You'll not have heard of him, but the grave tells its own tale. At the front, it has inscribed: "Mort pour la France. 1897-1917." A hero who died for France at the age of twenty, and no-one will ever give him a second glance. Now that's lonely.
Home