EXPERIMENT Erotourism

HYPOTHESIS Discover a city while looking for love

METHOD Take a short break with your partner. Travel separately by different means and don't arrange a meeting time or place. Now look for each other...

SUBJECT Gemma Bowes

Can looking for love help you discover a city? Does searching the streets for your sweetheart give you a new insight into your relationship? There seems no better place to test such a romantic idea than Paris, so I book a flight for myself and buy a Eurostar ticket for my boyfriend, Ed. We'll spend Saturday searching for each other but to stop the trip being a totally frustrating and lonely experience if we don't find each other, we bend the rules slightly by arranging a midnight rendezvous in the new and incredibly sexy Murano hotel.

The author of the Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel, Joel Henry, has tried this experiment six times with his wife and found her each time. I feel confident, but then I spot a clause that reads 'newly formed couples should avoid mega-metropolises'. Small cities such as Zurich with a minimal number of tourist attractions are recommended. Paris is massive. There are hundreds of must-see sites, dozens of desirable districts, millions of tourists. And we've only been together a year and a half. I wonder how well we really know each other. The topic of Paris has been strictly taboo in the build-up to our trip and we managed to avoid giving each other clues, such as 'did you get an "eyeful" of that?' nudge nudge, wink wink.

We've both been before independently, but never discussed it, so Ed doesn't know I've already seen the main sights and would prefer to wander around the Marais district, St Germain and the Latin Quarter. If I know him at all I'd guess his heart would lead him straight to the first pub showing football, perhaps a couple of restaurants and to see some live music. But the possibilities are endless.

Do you go where you want, go where you think they'd go, go where you think they'd think you would go, or go where they would think you would think they would go?

I opt for what I believe is the most obvious route between the most famous landmarks with maximum exposure to crowds. I'll take the shuttle bus to the Arc de Triomphe, walk the Champs Elysées to the Louvre and Notre Dame, head for Montmartre, then go to the Eiffel Tower in the evening. If I still haven't found him, I'll end the night touring the bars and restaurants of the Marais.

When I arrive in Paris to fierce rains my confidence is dampened. I'm convinced he'll hole up in a cosy pub. When I finally set off from the Arc de Triomphe at 2pm the magnitude of the task hits me. The city is colossal, the roads sprawl, the traffic blares and crowds swarm before me.

I push through a wall of unfamiliar faces on the Champs Elysées, craning my neck to scan both sides of the wide road, peering into every murky cafe. When the route splits to bypass a fountain or monument, I'm painfully aware he could be passing on the other side in the opposite direction. I'm stressed and hurrying along, urgently searching. I pass the gorgeous Grand Palais, Place de la Concorde and Jardin des Tuileries but I'm not appreciating my surroundings as I'm so focused on the people ahead. A couple of lookalikes prove to be duds, and everywhere I see smug, embracing couples. I'm starting to resign myself to the realisation that locating him is impossible, but I can't relax and enjoy being alone: I haven't seen him for a week, I want to find him.

Then as I enter the grounds of the Louvre, the strangest thing happens. I spot him. He's walking towards me on the other side of the glass pyramid. Then he stops to sit on a wall to smoke. My heart leaps and, terrified I'll lose him again, I run over, laughing and spring up, making him jump. He's shocked. So am I. It's just one hour since I started looking.

We dissect where we've been, our intended paths, routes and toilet stops we almost took, and agree it's a miracle. Relief floods over us. The day will be much more fun now, but meeting throws our plans into disarray: what do we do next? We start arguing about how to spend the rest of the afternoon and I start to wonder if it would have been simpler had we not found each other after all...

Looking for love in all the wrong places

Joel Henry's account of his experience of 'erotourism', which I read as the Eurostar rolled into the Gare du Nord, promised not only an unusual way to explore a city, but no less than 'love at first sight, second time around'. The rain in Paris did little to help the romance but I resisted the temptation to hole up in the nearest cafe and made my first strategic decision to locate mon amour .

Believing that my best chance was to remain visible all day, I decided to walk wherever I could. I climbed to Sacré Coeur and, with all of Paris laid out before me, it dawned that finding each other was a bit of a long shot.

Nevertheless, the rain was clearing and I was ready to look for love, something that may have affected my choice for my next destination, Pigalle, and specifically the Moulin Rouge.

I was soon the target of a middle-aged prostitute, who tried to usher me into a table-dancing bar. I got away but decided that it wouldn't do to meet my girlfriend here.

I headed south, walking through Les Halles and plumped for a change of strategy. Large, civic spaces would now be my hunting grounds: more faces for my legwork.

In the grounds of the Pompidou Centre the benefits of erotourism became clearer. To find her would be something, but it is the looking that counts. You notice more than usual. Had I not been paying such close attention to every face, maybe I wouldn't have seen the dancer practising t'ai-chi, or the kids who mimicked her and ran off laughing.

At the Louvre, I was beginning to plan for a long evening, when a funny thing happened. The feeling of seeing her bounding round the fountain to meet me was familiar. I was feeling it for the second time.

Ed Monk

Factfile

Gemma Bowes flew to Paris Charles de Gaulle from Luton with EasyJet (0905 821 0905; www.easyjet.com). A return costs from £34pp.

Ed Monk travelled from London to Paris on Eurostar (0870 584 8848; www.eurostar.com). A return costs from £59pp.

They stayed at the fashionable new Murano Urban Resort hotel (00 33 1 4271 2000; www.muranoresort.com in the Marais district. Rooms cost from £240 per night.