Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light

 €œBeautifully written and refreshingly original€¦ makes us see [Paris] in a different light.€ -- San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
 
Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Elys©es to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of P¨re-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens and the aristocratic Žle Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine.
Downie wound up living in the chic Marais district, married to the Paris-born American photographer Alison Harris, an equally incurable walker and chronicler. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris, and writing about the city he loves.  An irreverent, witty romp featuring thirty-one short prose sketches of people, places and daily life, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light ranges from the glamorous to the least-known corners and characters of the world€s favorite city. 

Photographs by Alison Harris.
 
€œI loved his collection of essays and anyone who€s visited Paris in the past, or plans to visit in the future, will be equally charmed as well.€ €"David Lebovitz, author of The Sweet Life in Paris
 
€œ[A] quirky, personal, independent view of the city, its history and its people€€"Mavis Gallant
 
€œGives fresh poetic insight into the city€¦ a voyage into €˜the bends and recesses, the jagged edges, the secret interiors€ [of Paris].€€" Departures