Five days in Paris

What is there to say of Paris that hasn't already been written, painted or sung?

If I were a musician I'd recreate the sounds - of the traffic rushing through the Grands Boulevards; the horns blaring as a delivery van blocks a tight corner; the pigeons softly whistling from a zinc-roofed  attic high above the street; the drunken shout at three in the morning; or the joyous mix of saxophone and double-bass that lifts the hearts and heads of the rain-soaked tourists winding their way past the artists' studios of Montmartre.

Were I an artist, I'd sketch the skeletal trees clinging on to their last golden leaves against a blue November sky. With a palette of silver and grey, I'd paint the city skyline seen from the top of the Pompidou Centre, with glistening drops of rain falling all around. I'd draw the lined but knowing eyes of the maitre d' who's seen it all and said so little.

With the skill of a poet, I might scribe a sonnet to the chic and beautiful, or perhaps the dirty and shoeless. I'd type a page on the old red typewriter at Shakespeare and Co., to add to the words upon words that line its walls. I'd find the lines to question why churches that should inspire love and hope are built so fearsome, dark and brooding.

But for five days in Paris we weren't painters, singers or writers. Instead, we walked. We walked and walked. We strolled and marched, rushed and dallied, paused and paced; through the streets, beside the Seine, around the gardens. As we walked and talked, we breathed and sensed the city, and somehow felt we came to know it just a little bit more.