Guest blogger:Michael Schuermann, author of Paris Movie Walks.

Walking through a city, a beautiful city, is one of the great pleasures in life. Beautiful cities, like all great works of art, aspire to the state of music.
Themes – markets, gardens or rivers – are for ever reprised and varied, the contrast between broad vistas across town squares or wide boulevards and narrow “medieval” lanes creates a dramatic tension while figures and little flourishes of odd encounters and eccentricities ensure that there is always a surprising little twist around the corner.

At the very basis, this is an interplay between order and variation. Too much order, and you get mind-numbing regularity, like in some parts of London where you have rows upon rows of terraced, near-identical residential homes. (Oom-pah, oom-pah: the equivalent of a German-style military march.) Too little order, and instead of a harmonious balance where every part complements and enriches the whole you get a snarling confrontation of disparate elements, say: a neo-classical town hall and a Gothic-style church separated by telegraph poles and a supermarket parking lot. This is no longer music, but noise. Dissonance. Cacophony.

And just like music, cities need a basic structure, too, a rhythmic foundation to hold on to and to prevent the flurry of individual motives and figures from descending into anarchy. In midtown Manhattan, this structure is provided by the breathtaking brashness of modernity, in central London by the self-aware grandeur of Empire. In Paris, this role is played by the bourgeois playfulness of the Belle Epoque: the frivolous architectural ornaments, the receding aluminum roofs, the merry dance of the iron railings along the housefronts of the grand boulevards.

Two suggestions then. The first for an “ordinary” day: if your hotel or holiday apartment happens to be located outside the immediate city centre (comprising the arrondissements 1 through to 4), spurn the Metro at least for one morning and walk to town instead. Paris is smaller than you may think – even from the outskirts of the city, this should not take you longer than an hour and a half, probably less, and you will see things that you would otherwise not have discovered. If you stay in the city centre, pick one of the more outlying sites and simply walk there. I would recommend Montmartre or the Eiffel Tower, simply because they always stay in sight, and there is no map-reading you have to do that could distract you from enjoying your little adventure.

For a beautiful sunny day, however, I would advise something else: a stroll down the Seine (from Notre Dame Cathedral in direction of the Place de la Concorde) or the Canal St Martin (starting near the Metro station Republique). If you are really up for it, you may even combine the two, doing one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, separated by a leisurely lunch in a bistro near the Canal or on one of the floating restaurants that moor in the shadow of the Cathedral. That would allow you to compare the two treatments of the Paris-and-water theme, once done as a modest piece of chamber music and once on a grand operatic scale.

There is simply no better way of spending a day in Paris – and of familiarizing yourself with the themes and motives of this wonderful and unique city.

Michael Schuermann is a journalist who has been living in Paris since 1993. His book, Paris Movie Walks, was written to provide a counterpoint to all the guidebooks that want you indoors in some musty old museum by helping people to get out to to smell, taste and experience the city of Paris in as many ways as possible.

The Île Saint-Louis is one of two natural islands in the Seine

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You don’t need to be a tourist to take an audio tour. Wherever you live, I’ll bet you’ve walked by plenty of plaques, plazas and parks and never really thought twice about them. Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you’ve wondered: Why is this street named Waverly Place and how come it intersects itself at the corner of Waverly Place and Waverly Place? (true, in NYC’s Greenwich Village). The best way to find this stuff out: walk the streets with an expert guide filling your head with history, story and lore.

1. Take the time to soak it in
Buildings, shops, street signs that you pass everyday have a back story that will quite simply just surprise and delight you – and you’ll never walk by them quite the same way again.

2. Impress your out-of-town friends
Have out-of-towners coming to visit? Know your stuff. Show them where Hendrix used to busk on the street. Or where to find a great “secret” view of the city.

3. Impress your local friends
Surprise your friends with some great local lore about George Washington or Jack Kerouac or Andy Warhol. (It really depends on your friends. And where you live.)

4. It makes a great date

Walk hand-in-hand with your better half as you both see explore your city together. Use two iPods, or share one with a splitter (it’s kind of like sharing a soda with two straws) – and the two of you will be walking in your own little universe together. Very romantic.

5. Talk about bang for the buck…
Not only is it a great date, it’s a cheap date. As memorable activities go, a two-hour tour for under $10 is a pretty good deal.

6. It’s like the DVR of activities
Once you download a tour, it is there for the taking. No scheduling necessary. No guides to wait for. No groups to meet up with. Just you and your iPod hitting the streets. And you can stop and start as often as you wish.

7. You’ll be inconspicuous as a “tourist”
Feel odd about doing the tourist-y thing like taking a tour just a few blocks from where you live? No worries. With an audio tour, you’re just taking a walk with your iPod and no one’s the wiser.

8. Where’s the downside?
You take a walk outside. You gain a new appreciation for a local neighborhood. You learn something new and arm yourself with some great cocktail chat at the next summer barbeque. What could be bad?

9. Give yourself something to blog about or tweet about
A good tour is packed with great material that we’re sure your readers and followers would enjoy. And, while we can only speak for CityListen, we’d bet that any of our fellow publishers would be happy to have you blogging about them.

10. It’s fun
Give it a shot. Leave work a few minutes early and get a tour in before dinner. Wake up before your usual time and take a mentally stimulating walk before you head to the office. Or make a day of it: stop along the way for lunch or to sit on a park bench and watch the “real” tourists; or follow it up with a night on the town. Simply put: it’s a great experience. It’s different, it’s enlightening and it’s fun.

Search Google or Bing for audio tours in your city. You’ll be glad you did!