So the sun finally comes out in earnest on Saturday, my last full day in Paris, giving the city back the soft sheen it had briefly when I arrived a week ago.

It’s surprisingly how quickly you can get into a routine.

Wake up. Get out of bed. Check hair to see if it’s still infused from the cigarette smoke at whichever restaurant you had dinner the night before – it inevitably is. Open bathroom door, and wriggle into the tiny shower that would make your high school locker look roomy. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If it’s still early enough, breakfast at the hotel – tea, croissant, yoghurt and orange juice, in that order – while flipping through the pages of the International Herald Tribune or Le Figaro.

Heave laptop-containing backpack onto shoulders, wondering if this is how the famous hunchback from around these parts got his start.

Turn left from the hotel onto on the street, a side road dotted with shops, restaurants and laundromats that suggest homes and apartments tucked away nearby. Stop for a moment and say hi to the cute little Yorkshire terrier standing inside the restaurant a few doors down. It spends the day staring mournfully at the customers, all forbidden from feeding it.

By the time you’ve finished wondering whether it’s the health inspector or the humane society that should be notified about this, you’ve reached at the nearest place – a broad, round intersection that requires risking life and limb to cross in a reasonably efficient way.

From there, it’s a straight walk between the trees and rod iron fences up the Porte d’Auteuil to the grounds of Roland Garros. It’s next to the Bois de Boulogne in the 16th arrondissement, which an expatriate friend says is a pretty ritzy neighbourhood. In the morning, there’s a full procession of spectators marching from the nearby metro stop to the main gates. Some are formally dressed, some smartly casual – but none scruffy.

Inside, it’s all pale walls and greenery and orange clay, like a terracotta villa with white shutters and leafy vines growing outside. In a tropical setting, it would be a dusty, sultry place, but the cooler clime gives it an air of reserved elegance.

Coming here, one of the things I most wanted to see for myself was the colour of the clay. Ochre, orange, caramel... There’s no consensus adjective. I found out why – it changes, looking tangerine-tinged when Roger Federer steps out to play Michael Russell on a quiet, damp Monday, and taking on a redder hue when David Nalbandian and Gael Monfils battle in front of a roaring crowd a few days later.

Another element of seeing the matches in person is feeling the clay as well as seeing it. The soft footprints left by every step, not just the deep scuffs visible on television. The crunch of the dirt underneath, giving every point a grittier, earthier soundtrack than the squeak of hardcourts or the muffled thud of grass.

The tournament is a big deal in France, all over television and prominent in the newspapers. The subways near the site are plastered with Nadal and Federer posters asking “Who can stop him?” On one Nadal poster, someone has scribbled graffiti that looks like Federer’s signature.

But in the city centre where tourists throng and residents wander, there’s not much sense that it’s taking place.

Paris has restaurants the way New York has drugstores – one on every block, and frequently several. People have their four-course lunches on the sidewalk tables, one of the best-known features of the city. None of the food being prepared inside – not the cheese, nor the butter or the pate – has been replaced with anything that may be cheaper but tastes worse. And the meat is still cooked no longer than if it was going to be consumed by the resident dog.

The print culture still exists – every newspaper on the continent seems to be available here. For Roland Garros coverage, there’s little to rival the scope of L’Equipe, the sporting newspaper that’s very much a part of the fabric of this event. Over several broadsheet pages, you can get match report after match report from its veritable army of reporters, skillfully laid out summaries of the day’s happenings on- and off-court, and offbeat items like Arnaud Clement listing his three best volleyers on tour. (For the record: Tim Henman, Michael Llodra, and Jonas Bjorkman.)

More than anything else, Paris is timeless. The streets may now by used by cars instead of horse-drawn carriages and the prices may be listed in euros rather than francs, but what was remains immutable in everything that now is.

You can walk from Notre Dame – the crowning medieval expression of the era’s anguished optimism – to the Eiffel Tower – one of modern architecture’s most recognizable icons. The first defies all the laws of engineering by continuing to stand, suggesting that perhaps we haven’t left it quite as far behind us as we might think. The second other has gone from being regarded with skeptical distaste to being the symbol of the city abroad, which may make it as good a monument to artificially-produced meaning as any other.

Building landmarks seems to have been a collective hobby over the years. Some are obvious, like the Arc d’Triomphe – built to create a doorway large enough for Napoleon’s ego to fit through. Some are puzzling – the site of the fall of the Bastille, one of the more consequential events in French history, is marked with a column commemorating the 1830 war instead.

But it’s all a reminder that despite the graceful repose of the city, much has happened here. At various times, these streets have flowed with wine, with blood, and with water.

Change is coming again – the election of Nicholas Szarkozy, the looming banlieues, the creeping scourge of McDonald’s – but for now, the tennis remains more pressing.

The last match I see is the terrific five-set battle between Novak Djokovic and Olivier Patience – one of those classic encounters featuring a top player trying mightily to subdue an inspired local playing his heart out for the crowds. And these is the knowledge that there are more classic matches to come – Sharapova-Schnyder, perhaps Henin-Serena, and who knows, Federer-Nadal in the final.

Timeless tennis for a timeless city. Au revoir.