It's really very difficult to give an accurate idea of what it's like to walk in Paris. You start out with a goal in mind but are almost immediately sidetracked by one diversion or another. It might be a beautiful church with saint's relics on display in a side chapel, a plaque marking the spot where a young resistance fighter was killed, a picturesque little street, or an interesting looking building. But that's what we're here for - the distractions are the city as much as the famous sites are.

An example of a little 'diversion' is the building where we found the stairwell pictured above - Denise decided she wanted to have a look inside and marched right in (she's braver than I am). A woman followed us in and Denise immediately struck up a conversation, half english, half french, and asked the purpose of the building and "Would it be alright for us to have a look around?". It turned out that this was an office building, mainly lawyers, and yes, it would be acceptable for us to look around. A little courage, or nerve, opened up a little part of Paris that we would never have seen otherwise.

Denise also wanted to try getting around on the Paris bus system, a little more daunting than the Metro, and thus the picture above right.

Denise filling her water bottle at Shakespeare and Company.

At this point I wasn't aware that we were on a quest for a site that Denise was determined to get to before we left Paris - and this was our last chance to do so. We made our way through a maze of streets, Denise stopping frequently to ask the way - there's a little problem here with streets that have one name on one side of a main street and another name on the other.

We found ourselves making our way through the crowds in the very busy tourist area around St. Michel and then, after another turn or two, there we were - the Shakespeare and Company bookstore! Probably the most famous bookstore in the world. I don't know how much coming here would mean to the majority of people but I was overwhelmed.

We realized that we had been very close to it a number of times during our travels around Paris - turn your back on the bookstore and you get a beautiful view of Notre Dame just across the narrower branch of the Seine where the river divides to make its way around the Île de la Cité.

Of course I had to have a souvenir and of course that souvenir was a translation of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris. And a t-shirt with a discrete Shakespeare and Company logo.

Love that wife of of mine! She's always surprising me in ways that take my breath away.