I'll get in the spirit of things with Red Room's invitation to blog about Paris with a link to a piece I wrote a couple months ago about visiting Paris -- and letting my young children be the tour guides, which they ably did with the help of their favorite children's books set in the City of Light.

If you'd like to chart your own tour of Paris, I also set up a series of interactive tours on Google maps (following the paths of Madeline, The Red Balloon, and The Invention of Hugo Cabret. I can't guarantee you'll meet the same helpful, if mildly confused, policewomen whom I met while trying to chase down the path of The Red Balloon. They'd never heard of the movie or book, interestingly, and were a bit incredulous at my claim that we were standing in the exact spot depicted on the pages displayed. Then again, they may have been incredulous that I thought I was actually speaking French...