The Most Beautiful Walk in the World A Pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter

If you plan to visit Paris, if you are fascinated by the city, The Most

Beautiful Walk in the World A Pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter is for sure a good book.

You musn''t technically imagine that these ones will be real walks.

Yes, of course, there are "walks" in characteristic places, suggestions for picnics close to the Eiffel Tower or in another inconic corners of the city, maybe better at the beginning of the day or in the night, but let's say that the author in this book will give you an idea of Paris: history, literary, important expaxts who made the difference in the city, food, habits, traditions, the old Paris, thanks to journals left behind for the posterity by students who lived in the capital at the end of 1890s.

Surely mr. Baxter didn't choose the house where he lives in with his wife and children with casualty. It was the house where Sylvia Beach lived in, located in rue de l'Odeon. A place resonating on his walls of literary life, books, important passages, let's remember Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein.

It's, adds mr. Baxter, a place pretty visited by tourists in search of that distant, but at the same time, still present past; Shakespeare and Company moved in another place with George Whitman, but that first American bookstore and their protagonists remain in the heart of people.

At the same time some revelations: it seems that when Hemingway returned to Paris in 1944 in rue de l'Odeon, he didn't search for Sylvia Beach. A new affair was born between Monnier and a young girl and so the ladies didn't live anymore together.

Thanks to this book you will discover also who rebuilt France, after the french Revolution and various Emperors. The man was George Eugene Haussmann. He created a new, modern city.

Interesting and pretty scaring the story of monsieur Henri Desiré Landru, a man who killed ten women because of their money from 1914 to 1918.

Historical book, you will discover many interesting and fascinating anecdocts, like also great book suggestions, french cafés, unusual spots of the city, painters like Matisse. I found extremely practical and importants the suggestions given at the tourists by the author at the end of the book.

I would have loved less dialogues and more prose.

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori