The Paris I dreamed of

I had already been to Paris and, as a good tourist, I had visited all the most famous places, which however had left me with nothing but the feeling of having visited an enormous open-air museum. Then I began to dream of a different Paris. A dream born from reading two books by a writer, Diego Ferra (Diegoferra9), young and talented, refined, deep and infinitely poetic. Two books so far published on a platform called Wattpad, with the titles: "And Then You Arrive. In the Rain" and "And Then You Arrive. In the Silence". Young characters discover each other and grow among the streets of a city that is not the monumental one already seen and known, reproduced in every magazine that talks about Paris.

It is the city of the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, full of little shops, market stalls, places full of the cheerfulness of young students, of the Sorbonne university, of independent cinemas with retrospectives or foreign films showing. It is the Paris of walks along the banks of the Seine, stopping to rest on a bench or sitting in an open-air café. The Paris of the metro routes that lead everywhere, to suburbs that are worth a visit, such as the Canal Saint-Martin area, or the Petite Ceinture park, or again the areas rich in small art galleries that exhibit works by street artists inside, just as you find endless ones on the walls of the city, walking with your nose in the air, looking around with the desire to discover something more and different.

The Paris of the quiet and suggestive avenues of the Père-Lachaise cemetery, lingering on monumental works that remind us of the existence of figures and artists who have always been and will forever continue to move us. The Paris of the bohemian charm of the Passages (covered galleries) that cut through entire districts from one boulevard to another, catapulting you into a nineteenth-century world, among shops specialising in miniatures, craftsmen, collectors, antique dealers and old bookshops where you lose yourself trying to read the most diverse titles among the dusty books displayed in the window. And speaking of books, you cannot go to Paris without visiting that masterpiece of history and culture that is the Shakespeare & Co. bookshop.

A historic bookshop founded in 1919 by Sylvia Beach, which was a meeting point for Anglo-American writers and poets in Paris, among them Hemingway, Joyce and Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Take some time to browse among new and old books, all in English, to sit upstairs reading the books of the historic and not-for-sale collection of the owner, or to daydream sitting in a wicker armchair with your gaze resting on walls of bookshelves that wrap you in a warm embrace. And when you are tired of this wonder, have a coffee or a hot chocolate, in the literary café beside it, resting your gaze on the Notre Dame cathedral, ready to be admired right in front of you.

This was the Paris I imagined! And the climb up the Eiffel Tower, looking from the second-floor terrace at the city at sunset, under an explosion of lights that shine on the stroke of the hour, concluded a journey that transformed the Paris of the dream into reality.