I’m upstairs in the reading room at Shakespeare and Company while Owen shops downstairs. It’s quiet up here. The walls are lined with wooden bookshelves filled with English language hardbound books that aren’t for sale. Next to me is a reading nook, like a window seat in the corner, with a red velour cushion on it. I could sit there with my back against the honey wood wall and read if I were reading instead of writing. At the end of the hall in the room across from me, facing the window that looks out over the Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral, is a wooden table with an ancient typewriter with circle keys.

The floor is old cracked hexagonal tiles, brick red and faded terra cotta, wonderfully worn. The ceiling is wood beams, old old with gaps in the grain from swelling and shrinking. The ceiling is low. On the wall in the stairwell are black and white photos of authors: Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, Sylvia Plath. Maurice Sendak. James Baldwin. Other authors, like Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, are painted in line illustrations in the stairwell beneath the photos. A piano sits in the corner. Photos of more authors adorn the walls around it. Walt Whitman. Toni Morrison.

Painted over the door is “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”

Painted on the stairs, “I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”

–May 31, 2025, 3:20pm

On our first full day in the city, I got to spend time alone with each person in my family doing something cool in Paris.

My husband and I were up before the kids, as we always are. We walked the Montmartre neighborhood again, this time in the cool of morning before the streets were clogged with tourists. We climbed the more than 200 steps to Basilique du Sacré-Cœur while runners with hydration vests ran down the steep cobbles beside the stone stairs. From the basilica, which sits at the top of Montmartre hill, you can see the whole of Paris.

After our walk, he and I had pastries and coffee at a little boulangerie around the corner, Chez Carla, where as I stood in line, I watched as they slid batches of fresh croissants off a pan into the display case. The croissants made a sound like stuffed dry leaves as they tumbled, flaky light and substantial at the same time.

Once the kids were awake, the four of us tried to figure out how to manage all of our desires. We each had a different One Thing we wanted to do in Paris. My husband wanted to head towards the river, maybe see Notre Dame. Our son’s one thing was the Shakespeare and Company book store. Our daughter wanted to shop, but her real one thing was to see the Eiffel Tower at night. I wanted to do it all. Plus Luxembourg Gardens.

We committed to shopping since our daughter’s time with us was limited.

We ventured out of our neighborhood, down Rue Marguerite de Rochechouart towards the Seine. We weren’t 5 minutes from our apartment when I grabbed a photo of what delighted me as a quintessential Parisian scene: flower boxes and window shutters above a fromagerie (cheese shop), with a chic woman walking through the frame just as I snapped the shot.

On our meanderings, our daughter and I stopped into a multi-level Zara next door to the Palais Garnier Opera House. The time we spent waiting in a sweltering line for sweltering fitting rooms ultimately paid off — she found a dress she loved. While we were in Zara, my husband and son sat on the palace stairs and listened to a street musician. Our son said later that that was one of his favorite moments from the trip, just sitting there taking in the guitar player, the busy streets, the palaces.

We walked by ritzy shops and through Jardin des Tuileries before standing on one of the more than a dozen bridges that crosses the Seine. At this point, the Left Bank, where Shakespeare and Company is, was right there, just a few steps further. I knew our son really wanted to go to the book store. I asked, do you want to go now? I do. We can split up.

So we split up. He and I walked the mile or more along the Seine, past the book vendors that I’ve read about so many times in so many books, including Hemingway’s A Movable Feast from his time in Paris more than100 years ago.

When we arrived, there was a line to get into the shop. There were lines for everything that day. The sidewalks were packed. The restaurants and cafés and museums and shops were packed.

Once inside, Shakespeare and Company was not packed; the purpose of the line was to control how many people are in the store at any given time. Once you’re in, you can breathe and feel the coziness of being in a really special book store, where beloved English language authors have found kindred spirits in their time in Paris, borrowed literature when they couldn’t afford to buy it, leaned on the shop owner to find rare books; they’ve read, written, thought, and found shelter.

I loved being with our son there. I loved that I got to go with him and experience it together. He picked up several books, put some back, picked up more, put more back. He’d brought his backpack so he could carry any books he bought. Ultimately, he took home The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. I bought Devotionals by Mary Oliver. We said yes when asked if we wanted our books stamped with the Shakespeare and Company stamp.

After the book store, we waited in the leafy cover of the Marché aux Fleurs (flower market) for my husband and daughter. Our son wanted to go back to the apartment. Our daughter wanted to shop more.

I went with our daughter, even though I was hot and hungry.

As soon as we started walking in the sun, she wilted, too. I saw a brasserie with tables in the shade, Le Sarah Bernhardt, and when I asked about a seat, the waiter took us around to a much better set of tables — we’d gone to the quiet side, and he took us around front where the people-watching was spectacular. We got seats at a little round table outside, facing the bustling Place du Châtelet, and sighed with pleasure to get off our feet.

I convinced our daughter that what she wanted was an Aperol Spritz. “They’re so refreshing on a hot day.” I got one, too. Our waiter was fun and friendly, full of smiles in in his tanned and wrinkled face. He brought us olives, and ice for our water (we were hot and I misunderstood him when he asked “still?” for our water, and I said, “Yes, chilled please.”)

Annabelle and I refreshed ourselves in the shade. We sipped our Aperol Spritzes and iced water, shared a caprese salad, and watched the fantastic style on display on the cobbled sidewalks in front of us. We commented on all the fashion we saw, what we liked, “Ooh, I love those pants,” “Look at those shoes!” , “That bag is spectacular,” “I like whatever this trouser thing is some of the guys are doing,” “I love how everyone uses color,” “Look how she pulls that off.” She talked about how refreshing it is that all the college girls where she’s studying abroad don’t wear the same things as each other like they do at home — women have their own style and wear what they wear because they like it, because they put it together, because it’s them. They don’t just wear whatever they’re supposed to wear so that they fit in. She admires the confidence and is inspired by it. And she loves that people actually care about style.

My edges were relaxed and fuzzy after the Aperol Spritz, and I felt wonderfully happy. We were fortified for another round of shopping after our rest and refreshment, and so we were off to Bershka, a store we don’t have at home, and where she found success and bought dresses and tops.

I was so happy to have that time alone with our daughter, and before that, with our son, and before that, with my husband, in this beautiful city. Our first morning at a café with coffee and croissants with my husband, appreciating Shakespeare and Company with our son, and Aperol Spritzes and people watching with our daughter were three of my favorite moments in our time in Paris.