You've dodged traffic to study the Arc de Triomphe, had your picture taken with the Eiffel Tower in the background, climbed the great hill of Montmartre to visit Sacre Coeur, and told a dozen beggars with colored pencils that you categorically did not wish to have your portrait sketched.

It has been exhausting, but the heavy lifting is complete and your Fodor's is whimpering in submission on the hotel nightstand.

Congratulations. Now it is time to see Paris.

Paris is one of the great capitals of the world and a repository of an astounding array of art, architecture and history - something the French certainly won't let you forget. It's also a wonderful city in which to merely poke around without an itinerary. Its unheralded side streets contain a beauty equal to that of its grand boulevards, and its humble cafes can be just as satisfying as its majestic museums, particularly when you're thirsty.

Americans have taken these walks as long as there have been Americans. The most famous, perhaps, was Benjamin Franklin, who arrived in Paris in 1776 and carried out his diplomatic mission for more than seven years from his home in the suburb of Passy. You can still find the Rue Benjamin Franklin near the Trocadero and follow it to Rue de Passy.

Right behind Franklin would be Ernest Hemingway, and you can walk in the writer's footsteps through two neighborhoods on the Left Bank of the Seine - the 5th and 6th arrondissements - in a brisk afternoon or a leisurely day. That includes occasional stops for nourishment and refreshment - just as Hemingway would have done.

There's no set path or order of stops. Get a good map, a few Metro tickets, and create your own Tour de Papa.

From 1921 to 1928, Hemingway prowled these neighborhoods, making his slow climb from promising young writer to acclaimed author. He wrote in the cafes, ate in the bistros, drank in the bars, and when you see one of those that looks inviting, chances are Hemingway thought so, too.

You can start at the Pantheon, the shrine to great citizens of France and the resting place of many of them. It is a gloomy building in general, but if you like the Foucault pendulum at the Franklin Institute, check out the one in the Pantheon, which Leon Foucault hung himself in 1851.

Behind the Pantheon, wind your way through narrow streets to the Place de la Contrescarpe, a tidy square bordered by cafes and shops. A few steps off the plaza is 74 Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, where Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, had their first apartment - a third-floor, cold-water walk-up that doesn't look much better now.

When they lived there, a ballet school and dance club was on the ground floor, a setting Hemingway copied in The Sun Also Rises. He and Hadley were so poor that the family cat often served as a babysitter, yet Hemingway found the money to also rent a top-floor, unheated room around the corner at 39 Rue Descartes to use as a writing aerie.

The neighborhood was dismal then, and even Hemingway avoided the Cafe des Amateurs, a seedy spot he referred to as "the cesspool of the Rue Mouffetard." Today, it is a bright, inviting place called the Cafe Delmas, where you can sit at a sidewalk table, drink a Belgian beer, and watch the world stroll past, as it has been doing for quite some time. The Mouffetard, a narrow, winding street lined with every imaginable shop, was the beginnings of the Roman road from Paris to Lyon.

Hemingway's career was helped by Gertrude Stein, a good writer herself but also den mother to what she called the "lost generation" - the post-World War I artistic set in Paris. Hemingway often sat in her parlor drinking sticky plum brandy.

To get to Stein's home at 27 Rue de Fleurus, head back past the Pantheon and enter the beautiful grounds of the Jardin du Luxembourg. A slight detour will take you to Gilbert Jaune, an expansive stationery store on the Boulevard Saint Michel, where you can still buy the small blue notebooks Hemingway used when he wrote in the cafes.

As you enter the park, the Palais du Luxembourg will be on your right. The 17th-century palace, once home to members of the royal family, has served many functions, including as headquarters of the Luftwaffe during World War II. Now, it's the meeting place of the French Senate. Walk around the grand bassin, a pool where children sail small boats and where Hemingway and Hadley often brought their son to play.

Exiting the park, you'll find the Rue de Fleurus and Stein's home.

Head south to the neighborhood of Montparnasse. At the Vavin Metro stop, you'll find three classic brasseries - Le Dome, La Rotonde and Le Select - which Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his Paris years, or The Sun Also Rises, the book that made him a star.

Much of the first draft of that novel was written three blocks away from those noisy places, on the terrace of La Closerie des Lilas. Hemingway would look up occasionally to contemplate the statue of Marshal Michel Ney, a great French general who didn't get the same retirement plan as Napoleon after Waterloo. He was executed by firing squad in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

The restaurant is still there, but the terrace is boxed in by a hedgerow. Ney's statue is visible above the bushes, though, sword raised in defiance.