Superbe moments in Paris....

      When I'm old and grey and full of sleep and sitting there, clutching a glass of red wine, these are the moment that I will flashback to in the brain file labelled "Paris, October 2011." In no particular order, no, I lie, the first one is definitely number one.
      1. Browsing through the second-hand books outside Shakespeare & Company and, as three American women walked past, hearing one of them say to the others as she looked up at the sign...oh joy, you couldn't make this up.... "So, is this is, like, where Shakespeare...wuz?"
     2. Ambling around the Marais on the last morning and suddenly finding myself in Place des Vosges. What an incredible place to live, I thought. How nice to have a little pied à terre here. Don't hold your breath. Apartments start at about one million euros--and that's for something quite modest.

   3. Discovering the extraordinary joy of window-shopping in Paris ("licking the windows" is what we say in French). I don't mean the undeniable pleasure of seeing famous names like Chanel, Hermès and basically everyone else who runs double-page ads in French Vogue, but the sheer shock value of what's in one window--and the next.

A bath with integral book-shelves. How clever is that?

 A shop selling reproductions of exquisite antique board games.

 A florist's. You just want to buy armloads of flowers here.

Feather-covered skulls. An exhibition, I think.

   4. The sheer, unbelievable cheekiness of Parisian parking. Given its dimensions, we reckoned that this tiny Smart car earned multiple points for simultaneously blocking two zebra crossings AND the wheelchair-accessible ramp to the sidewalk. Now that took skill.