I visited two years ago and have wanted to return ever since.

There is just so much history to Paris, so much life in the brickwork and stories in the streets, and you feel them vaguely when you walk down the Seine or through the back streets.

It's a magic I wanted to feel again, but also to try feeling alone, so I booked a solo trip for the end of Easter holiday.

I got the Eurostar from London's King's Cross to the Gare du Nord, and I maintain that there is nothing as wonderful as a train ride.

On the Eurostar, I did some writing, I watched some of Sense and Sensibility, and I started reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, because I'm a big fan of reading location-specific books when you're travelling.

And eventually, my train came into Paris, and it was just as beautiful as I remembered.

I've arrived in Paris, and oh my goodness, this hotel is incredible.

And I've been upgraded. I am going to give you a room tour because I'm actually flabbergasted.

I just called my parents and gave them a room tour because I'm kind of in shock.

I literally just can't believe I'm here.

So when you walk in, there is a reception room in the room itself.

You walk through here, and here's the wardrobe.

This is the bed, and there's a little table where I can do some work.

And then here's the bathroom.

And then the most incredible part, like this has to be the best bit of the room, is this view.

I am actually flabbergasted.

My plan is to go and just wander around the area surrounding the hotel first.

When I'm travelling alone, especially in a city, I don't like to stay out late.

And so you will notice in this video that I come back to the room at like latest 7 every day.

I think I might get changed into something else because you know when you've just travelled in something, and then it feels kind of like, gross.

I always make a list and a plan of things to see before visiting somewhere new.

I mark locations on Google Maps, which means when I'm in the area, I know what's nearby.

And there is a whole section on my map for bookshops to visit.

And in a stroke of good fortune, my hotel is actually less than 3 minutes from the Galignani Bookshop, which is actually the oldest English bookshop on the main continent of Europe.

And it currently holds 50,000 titles.

I was surprised at how many there were that I hadn't seen before as well.

I love the quietness of bookshops, the stillness, and how it becomes a window of timeless meditation.

I wandered up staircases, past ladders, and ran my hand over the wooden 1930s bookshelves.

I was sad to leave when my body reminded me, impatiently, that we still hadn't eaten.

And so I left and walked through the garden to Wildermood for dinner.

There are so many birds everywhere.

And they're not just pigeons, which is quite refreshing for a city.

They're kind of, they're crows. I always want to say ravens when it's crows.

And there are ducks. There are mallards. Mallards?

There are mallard ducks, which is really quite bizarre.

This is a tuna salad, but it's made up of, um, this is, like, tops I can't eat.

It's been a long time since I've had an immersion in cinema.

And after that, I went back to my room and pondered if life is really real right now.

So I went to that bookshop earlier, and it was just magical.

I spent about 40 minutes looking around, and I saw so many books that I haven't seen anywhere in England.

And I do go bookshopping quite a lot.

So even though they were English books and they were being imported to France, I found so many.

Like, it's so well-stocked. Loads of beautiful editions as well.

Like, editions that I didn't even realise were in print.

Third edition is this.

Um, they are the Eris Gems.

When I saw this, I knew I had to get it.

It's Unpacking My Library by Walter Benjamin.

And there is Walter Benjamin.

The PDF of this essay is only about four pages.

But I was recommended to read it last term by one of my tutors, and I loved it.

I just think it encapsulates the art of book collecting and the value of books as physical objects, as opposed to just texts.

It bridges the gap between the two really well, and articulates it in a way that I couldn't articulate for myself.

So reading this really changed my perspective, or at least helped me tap into ideas that I already had around the division between book object and text.

Anyway, I'm going to do a little bit of work, actually.

Um, it's about nine o'clock, and there is a poem.

I just got sent over from Yale.

I requested this scan of this document about three or four weeks ago, and I've been anticipating it so much.

I'm really looking forward to reading it and transcribing it.

So I'm actually going to sit and transcribe it and, like, write a paragraph about it and start thinking about it now, because I just cannot wait.

I'm so excited to look at it.

I'm going to do some work, and I'm going to be using my iPad, so I'm going to change my VPN for when I'm working.

Of course, I do that every single time.

Especially in hotels, it is a really good idea to change your VPN address.

The VPN server I use is NordVPN, of course.

It's the fastest VPN server out there, and it is so easy to use.

You have this big map, and then you can choose which location you want to change your VPN to.

I also just find when I'm travelling that I want to be using a UK web browser, because the results that you get obviously change depending on which country your VPN is registered to.

So just for ease, I like to switch my VPN address to somewhere like London.

So if you have the meaning to change your VPN address, you can use my link to get an extra four months free on the two-year plan.

Thank you so much, NordVPN, and I'm going to get to reading that poem, because I'm really excited.

So here I am just doing some work.

I still cannot tell you how exciting it is to work with any sort of manuscript.

I just love working with manuscripts, even manuscript scans, and this poem did not disappoint.

It was just as riveting as I was hoping it would be.

And then before bed, I just read some of Sartre's Nausea.

Sartre was an existentialist philosopher who lived in Paris, and Nausea is a novel which uses fiction to explain his existentialist philosophy.

The big idea with Sartre is that purpose is something we create for ourselves, that we're not born with purpose.

His very famous quote is,

For Sartre, this self-creation of purpose can be very restrictive and claustrophobic, and you definitely get that in Nausea.

The fruit salad is so good.

To also get ready, I've put on some makeup while I was waiting for breakfast, because as soon as I'm finished, I'm going to head out.

But I'm kind of in the mood for...

They've also given me so much bread.

These birds are so funny.

You know, they really remind me of the birds in the Cave Birds illustrations by Leonardo Baskin.

It was a 30-minute walk to the coffee shop, over the Seine and past the bookstores, and under the new morning light, which made the water glow silver.

Oh, and I'm so tired.

It was a 30-minute walk to the coffee shop, over the Seine and past the bookstores, and under the new morning light, which made the water glow silver.

Oh, and I also popped into every church I could as I walked, because I cannot resist good ecclesiastic architecture.

Honestly, it's one of my favourite things about visiting somewhere new.

I just feel like you can get a really good sense of a place and its architectural history from visiting churches, so would highly recommend, especially because they're usually free to enter.

I'm actually heading over to the Sartre Cafe now.

Le Dumago is a cafe known for hosting authors in Paris, so Sartre frequented here, also Albert Camus, Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir.

Oh, I also spotted this really cool sculpture.

These are all books.

This cafe was one of the top things I did want to go to.

So, of course, I bought my own little notebook to do some writing with an espresso.

An espresso, because France isn't the best on milk alternatives, I would not say that this is my top choice.

But somehow the espresso tasted better because the surroundings were so wonderful.

It's pouring the rain, and I'm soaking wet.

And then I went to the second bookshop on my list, another English bookshop called the Abbey Bookshop, which is very nearby, which is this wonderful, spiralling cavern of books, so vibrant and eclectic that you could get lost in the arched stone walls in the cellar and stuck between the narrow and haphazardly stacked shelves of books.

There were old and new books here, and again, just such an excellent variety.

This was also empty when I visited, and there is something wonderful about an empty bookshop.

This bookshop is incredible.

I think I'm going to get this one.

I think I'll buy this one.

I curled my hair this morning, but it got so wet that all of the curls came out.

I'm just getting ready.

I am changing.

I'm going for a very, very fancy meal, and I wasn't sure if I would book this.

I booked it really last minute.

I booked it yesterday.

I would love to go in and see the architecture.

So I'm going to go to The Ritz for lunch today, and they've got a vegan mushroom pasta.

Whenever mushroom and vegan go together in a sentence, it becomes a requisite order from the menu.

This is my outfit.

I'm wearing this set, and it's one of my favourite outfits.

It's maybe a little bit chilly for it, but also I'm sure it'll be warm inside.

And then I'm going to bring my notebook and book, of course.

It was so sunny, literally just five minutes ago.

Now I love the rain, but I did end up taking shelter for another espresso, and this time I made a list of some paintings I wanted to see in the Orsay that afternoon.

I like to do this whenever I visit a gallery so that I have a goal and something to look for.

Sometimes it will just be one painting, because I do like to wander around galleries.

There's something wonderful about that.

But jotting down the room numbers of my top ten paintings can help me to know which direction to generally go in.

With my list secured, I went to the Orsay.

This is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a railway station built between 1898 and 1900, which closed in 1939 and became a gallery in the 80s.

Old train stations are some of my favourite kinds of buildings, especially when they have glass roofs like this one, and I spent some time just admiring the architecture first, and climbing right to the top of the building so that I could see it in full.

Now this gallery mainly holds French art from the 19th and early 20th century, which is one of my favourite periods of art, and I think there's something fitting about it then being in a train station.

It's a place of movement and travel and change, which is what we see between the Art Nouveau and the Impressionist movement in Paris.

Fortunately, this was actually the temporary exhibition, which was on while I was there.

It's the 1874 Impressionism exhibition, it's running for a few months, and I cannot believe that my trip aligned with this.

They did this in the salon style, with these dark red walls and beautiful gilded frames, and this is the first time curators have tried to recreate it.

Like, this was an actual exhibition from 1874, which has been resurrected.

There were some amazing paintings in this exhibition as well, like some bucket list paintings, and I've pictured my favourites.

Recently I've been loving Impressionist, but at the moment I would say it's my favourite kind of art.

The colours of the Impressionists are probably my favourite, like especially with the cityscapes and the Docklands, which are so often pictured.

These are scenes which shouldn't maybe be so beautiful, but with the light pinks and the mauves and the blues, it looks beautiful.

Using these colours of morning, they're able to cast this wonderful bucolic light onto these cityscapes.

I do think that the Impressionists are the true experts of romanticising your life, and seeing these beautiful things which sometimes we can miss.

It's what Baudelaire talks about in his essay, The Painter of Modern Life.

In it, Baudelaire argues that the painter is unique and talented because he's able to see things which not everyone is able to see, and then translate this into an art which lets people see it.

Weeping willows next to the sea.

I don't know why there's something so wonderfully poetic about that.

It's 8 o'clock, I'm in bed for the day, and I can't quite process how many wonderful things I saw today.

The Orsay was incredible.

I think, well, one of the best museums I've seen, one of the best galleries I've seen.

The Impressionism exhibition was especially great.

It's the 1874 one, which marks a shift in the impression before and after of this artistic shift.

There was this big display in 1874.

Many of the great Impressionist artists were first shown in the salon and given acclaim for this style of art.

This is the first time that there's been an attempt to try and put these pieces back together.

It's incredible that my trip aligned with this, especially because last term at uni,

I did a module in fin de siècle art and literature, and we looked at a few Parisian writers.

Very cool to see those.

I also saw the Gustave Dore, and the clocks as well were just amazing.

I love clocks.

Now I'm wondering if there's a clock museum or something in Paris that I could go to, but I don't really have time to be fair.

There are so many things I do want to see, like there's the Gustave Moreau museum, which I really want to go to, and I really want to go to the Victor Hugo house as well, which maybe if I have time I'll go to tomorrow morning, but I just don't know if I will.

I'm running out of time, I've only got one full day left.

I've got a few snacks to have in the room, but I wanted to try this.

It's the carrot hummus from Wild and Moon.

It's so small, this was 6 euros.

This was something I really wanted to try while I was in Paris.

And then I got a baguette to go with that, and some crisps.

And mushrooms, because I really like eating raw mushrooms.

It was between mushrooms and carrots, because I wanted something fresh, and I love eating raw mushrooms and I love eating raw carrots, but I feel like English carrots are better, and whenever I buy carrots and I'm not in the UK I end up regretting it, because they're just not as flavourful as the ones I think we get in UK supermarkets.