This book has a lot of fantastic photos of Paris! I gave it four stars instead of five because a lot of the pictures were taken in winter with bare trees. So the sights are familiar, but the landscape isn't quite the summer wonderland that I remember.

Back in Paris
by Robin Williamson

Here I'm back in Paris, where first I came to die
Jesus, it amazes me to be standing here alive
after all these rambling nightmares, all those crazy dawns,
empty-handed... and thirty years on
and I'm walking back down St-Denis and I'm sure it's safe as milk,
watching the lovely girls go there like their underwear is made of silk.
I feel like I know every story and the words to every song,
but I don't know where my good friends go when they are dead and gone.

Five o'clock the gendarmes come, move me down the lane.
Six, the other gendarmes come, move me back again.
Dawn dims the electric light, paints the river grey
The city birds peck up the night and spit out another day

******

As for the book :


Exactly what it says on the cover - 500 photos of Paris. All in gorgeous colour, all with breathtaking, heart-rending detail, by Maurice Subervie who i don't know and who is not related to me as far as I know. It's divided into areas - The Seine and its Islands, Right Bank, Left bank, Passageways, and Gardens, so you can take a virtual tour. So many aspects - the grand (place de la Concorde), the mundane (Poujauran bakery, rue Jean-Nicot), the height of summer, the snows of winter, the bejewelled interiors, the crowds, palatial elegance, backstreet graffiti, the modernism of la Defense, the stained glass of Sainte-Chapelle - I could go on, but you get the picture. 500 of them if you buy it. I'm looking for exactly the same sort of book on London and New York, but I haven't found them yet. Anyhow, this is my all time favourite photograph book, and the only tiny complaint I have is that they put the wrong photo on the front- oops! I can't stand that silly glass pyramid at the Louvre, maybe everyone else thinks it's spiffy but it always looked cheap and nasty to me. I would have gone for the two old dears sitting outside the greasy spoon cafe in the Belleville neighbourhood on page 253. Great.