THE WALKS | THE PREAMBLE WALK ONE On your first walk in the city, do not look at street signs. Walk and walk and walk. You know you will be done when you've found a hotel and it has as many stars as you feel you deserve. Some places are worth their stars, and some stars should be stripped or plastered over. For example, a hotelier might sell you a nice room for the night, but you have to sleep on the floor because there is another guest sleeping in the bed. Or, perhaps you'll find a charming room with a view of le Palais des Papes, perfect save for the bellman who stands at attention in your room all night, demanding a better tip. Of course, if you're an insomniac and need someone to talk to, there's the bellman. Or, if you're a sleepwalker, the bellman is there to guide you back safely to bed once you've gone through the town in your pyjamas on the Tour des Noctambules. Be sure to open the windows before taking a room or you might find yourself opposite a maudlin sight, perhaps an abatoir. Do not panic if you can't find a suitable hotel. Let others panic as a division of labor. That way, you can go find the hotel, and they can panic. They can also panic when they can't find you in the city. Do not offer excuses for why you took so long. And do not give into their long faces either. As a last resort, buy your freedom. Feign a sudden hunch and disappear again saying you're heading to le Cloitre St. Louis just down the road, and point. Once you've gotten to the hotel, give the check-in clerk your credit card and return to your party awaiting you on Rue de la Republique. For not an unreasonable sum, you can put an end to the dilemma, come out poorer but with a feeling of relief. Then, enjoy a deep sleep in a former cloister au coeur de la Cite, built in 1589 as a Jesuit novitiate. Be sure to parade the stately corridors in your socks where you can pretend you're ice skating and meditate on inponderables as the former residents once did; observe the mottled shades of brown to green to beige hugging the surface of the plane tree trunks clustered in the center of the hotel's interior courtyard. Late at night, enclose yourself in the hotel's reading room, a petite cell with curtains covering the bare, white walls and a window, which overlooks the chapel, added in 1611, below. You will be impressed with the contemporary feel in this place: the architect Jean Nouvel, who also designed the Institute of the Arab World in Paris, was called in and did a splendid job. Stay the week and only come out for walks. WALK TWO This instructive walk heads out Porte de la Republique down Cours J. Jaures past the Poste and to the station where you can inquire about schedules for the next leg of your journey. Chances are, the authorities will ask to see your papers, and once they determine that you are merely an innocent tourist, they will release you after you promise not to do it again. While out on walk two, which is a walk that one must take alone, a gypsy may mesmerise you on the sidewalk near le Cloitre St. Louis. She will seem more like a used car salesman than a used car salesman. She will rough you up a bit, mixing her incantations with gestures, grabbing and tugging you this way and that on magically significant zones of your body. This process is a way of removing evil curses and as many francs. First, she will hand you a blue glass bead "in the name of Sara." Hooked, you will be reeled in by the charm; she will remove your will with it. Though a resident of Avignon, and therefore worthy of respect, she is nothing like the peacocks, who ask for nothing more than your delight. In fact, it's hard to imagine that they breathe the same air. Tell the gyspy you must be getting on for you still have seven walks to go. These are the magic words that will make her slink away, sorry that she ever bothered you. WALK THREE This delightful walk will take you down Rue Joseph Vernet and back behind the Mairie and beyond. Like walk number two, this walk is for one. Stop for a croissant and an espresso at the tiny storefront just opposite Leonardo da Vinci's flying device shop. In August they are closed for vacation. Chances are, the owners are trying to navigate through the town where you live. For at least one foggy morning, let Avignon be an imagined city -- the best kind of city in which to lose yourself. Ungraspable, a figment, a Potemkin city, a mirage, a shadow play, more reverie than reality. More like a maze than a shopping mall, more like the Little Prince's planet than a planned community, Avignon's one-way, narrow, cobble-stone streets will walk you, not the other way around. If you are ready to go on this walk, someone will leave a package for you at the hotel desk with an itinerary of sites that are no longer there, but for which there exist tomes of florid descriptions. Some of the addresses are still stenciled or chisled on the doors that give onto the street, but the residents do not want to be disturbed. If someone approaches you, it's okay to follow them up the winding stairs of their hotel particulier. Be sure to peek your head in now and then to take in a courtyard or two through the ornate iron grill work of the city's thousand plus gates. WALK FOUR This is a walk for three. This is the kind of walk where you are heading outside of town but then decide not to go. Instead, you explore the neighborhood and it helps you share the experience with your travel companions. People: you will meet many, many people. Say "bonjour." If you step on their feet -- and in July there will be many feet, say "excusez-moi," or "pardon." They might reply "that's okay." To avoid having to negotiate the right of way on the sidewalk, or to avoid those who demand more sidewalk than they deserve, walk unpopular routes; find the back alley routes. "Ah, that feels so much better," you will say. Remember, in Avignon, you are very close to everywhere. But, do not be tempted by these other attractions. You will break the spell that the town holds over you. If it is raining, buy an umbrella and try to get as wet as you can while still holding it over your head. If it is merely misting, go to le Cloitre des Arts on Rue Joseph Vernet. You can take tea, starting at 3 p.m. and wait there while your hair dries. You can have lunch, if you'd like at La Cuisine de la Reine. That's what everyone else does. Well, not everyone. You may even be lucky to run into the waiter who will bump a boring regular and seat you and your walking companions ahead of a wealthy, well-heeled local. You will not know if the waiter is a French man who speaks very good English or an English man who speaks very good French. It will puzzle you through to dessert, and just when you muster the will to inquire, someone new will come to bring you the check. Someone whose English will sound like a nail being pulled out of a plank. Amaze them with your dining vocabulary, and they will write your name in a very large book filled with extraordinary personages who have passed one or another of their tests. You can easily strike up a conversation with the nice shopkeepers in the Cloitre des Arts. They sell gifts, but they give away chatter for free. This peaceful haven across the hall from the famous "la Reine," has its own dialect quite different from the waiters' whose comportment assures them a good tip. In other words, you will not have to tip anyone in the store. They might even tip you, but try to maintain your balance lest you topple over. You can find humanist magazines for readers of French, many objects with little real purpose and a wide range of fragrant concoctions to take home to people given to using their noses for activities other than sneezing. WALK FIVE Walk five is closed for repairs, please come back next Spring. WALK SIX This walk will take you to the Pont with its view of the Rhone. The Pont St. Benezet is not the bridge to end all bridges, but as bridges go, it only goes so far -- then it stops. It could be called an abbreviated bridge, but that doesn't sound as nice as its other names: it is also called le Pont d'Avignon, like in the song. Cars will not want to use this bridge to get to the other side. People who are aware that it only goes so far might pay the price of admission and dance a jig out there above the water of the Rhone, in view of the Fort St. Andre on the other side, in Villeneuve-les-Avignon. You see, much of the bridge has been washed away, and like bobbed hair, a Dobberman Pincer's tail, or a pruned bush, it took, people got used to seeing it that way and mussed with the look no further. Bridges, unlike starfish arms, do not grow back by themselves. WALK SEVEN This walk, which will take you to the highest point in Avignon, le Rocher des Doms, will show you that it is not possible to go on a walk for someone. Nor can you eat lunch on their behalf to help their hunger pangs go away. This is a walk that begins alone. Gradually add more people until no more fit. Remember, too: you cannot go on someone's vacation for them, just like that adage, which I believe we owe to Arab origin: nine women cannot make a baby in one month. At 6 a.m. set out to see the peacocks, only you should forget that there will be peacocks when you set out. If you ask me, they're the ones who really run this town. There they will be waiting for you at the pond, which also will come as a surprise. One peacock will be perched on a railing and another, in the distance, will let out a marvelous cry known well to those who have lived around zoos. These are the petits, the descendants of the Popes' peacocks, a living monument to the past. On this walk, you will be surrounded by a mist, the streets and the park owing to the early hour will be sparsely populated, and it will be at least two hours before you see another person. As the ancients will tell you, to really get to know a bird, you must spend at least two hours with it. The winding path you carve through these half-deserted streets will lead you towards the inevitable: the Pope's palace. Something will compell you to climb up the ramps and stairs. You will go on up and up and up, your heart expanding as each step opens to you an increasingly enchanted stage: the peacocks, the mist, the ruins of Fort St. Andre, the odd rocks protecting a murky pond bathed in drizzle. Swans, cignets, and ducks, which look like they were designed by Erte. The conclusion that will swell in your heart: bring someone you love here to see this, even if their feet are sore and they can walk but ten steps at a time and even if it takes all day. The day ahead will be devoted to sharing just one perfect total, a hidden, but still very well-traveled bird sanctuary, at the foot of the Pope's palace, up high on the highest point of the town of Avignon, with a view of the Rhone and even Mount Ventoux and the gentle rolling hills of Provence. You will succeed and will return back down through the mist, through the peacock and swan calls and folliage, as the day recedes, finally hungry for the first meal of the day. WALK EIGHT On this walk, you will encounter a parade. If you do not find one, follow Plan B and start one of your own perhaps down la Rue des Troubadours. Many Mardi Gras costumes are on sale in a boutique which closed shortly after WWII. The proprietress is still in business, however. They say she looks like Bridgette Bardot and sings like Edith Piaf. Une vraie vedette de Mardis Gras, she will dress you as you aren't so you can see what it is like to let go of yourself and become something else: a lion, a mayor, Pierrot perhaps. Don't let the parade start without you: it is your parade, and like a wedding ceremony, there must be at least two or three persons involved. In this case: three will be the minimum: one to lead the parade, one to follow and one to clap, overcome with the joy of the day, someone to go home when it's over reflecting on how life's simple pleasures are really the greatest pleasures of all. WALK NINE How do you feel after all of this walking? You have been leading yourself around for quite some time now, and it is sure that you have found at least one guided tour comprising a herd of numb-faced individuals cocking their ears towards a lady holding some type of tall stick or wand, a peacock feather perhaps, or a cane with a portrait of Voltaire carved, in bad taste, out of some poor elephant's tusk. The drone of her voice as it trails on and on puts some of the group into a special ambulatory sleep. They are patted on the rump when it is time to move on to the next sight by a junior version of the lady up front. Because of the size of the herd in which you are traveling, you cause all kinds of dismay to pedestrians around you. They cannot get by the thick swarm, and expend much effort in trying to avoid you. Walk nine is not for everyone, but if you have gotten this far, please mark an X by this part of your guide. (Or, if you prefer, another letter of the alphabet will also do, a Y, for example, or a P.) While the P can stand for perseverence, after nine walks, perhaps it would like to sit for awhile. WALK TEN This walk will take you down the Rue des Teinturiers. Grab your husband, or a lover, and in your evening dress, yes, like Fred and Ginger, go dancing through the streets. Cheek to cheek to cheek to cheek: all the cares that hung around you through the week will seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak. And you will find the happiness you seek.

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