WINDOW SHOPPING IS FOR FLANEURS

I heard that some friends of mine are organizing a trip to Paris. Unfortunately I am going to visit some other friends in London and Brighton and I cannot do two things at the same time so I have to say no.
I went to Paris once, just 5 days in january. I remeber It was freezing cold, perhaps because I had temperature when I went there.

In the 19th century Hussmann's Pianification of the city modified completely the urban lifestyle: bridges, long large boulevards, arcades and walk paths.
New words: Flaneur , dandy culture, window shopping, crowd, street photography.

• The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.( Susan Sontag in her 1977 essay, On Photography.)

• There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city. (Cornelia Otis Skinner, Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, 1962, Houghton Mifflin, New York)

A new way to be lonely in an urban area was born: People felt alone in the crowd although they were not physically alone. "A big family of eyes" meet each other quickly in the street.

I am always a flaneur when I stroll around, idling: I fell in love with the people I meet in the streets, I love the buildings sorrounding me. I love to look at the windows, going shopping aimless. Window shopping.
You can imagine so much when you go around like that.