Tonight, there is no barred owl hooting from a tall tree in the woods outside my bedroom window. Instead, I'm enjoying  the traffic sounds of a busy city street –Rue de l'Université, in Paris, after a long day of arriving here. And walking, lots and lots of walking, especially along the Left Bank of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower.

Before lunch, our airport taxi dropped us at the apartment of our dear friends on the Rue de Monttessuy, where I took my first photo of this trip. One summer with our children we stayed for a week in their apartment, under this view of the tower, coming and going, morning, noon and night, and so that is why the scene does feel, as Henry Miller wrote, "intimate," as if having been here many times before, and having made so many happy memories, the scene belongs to me.

And we are in for a week of what looks like ideal, humbling, spring weather in Paris. Long, bright, busy days of wandering in the landscape of Paris ahead.