Finding New Chapters in a Familiar City
A Paris Trip With My Daughter
Paris has always felt a little bit like a second home to me. I have been lucky enough to visit the city around fifteen times, mostly in my former life in publishing. For years I travelled to Paris twice a year, selling English-language books for academic publisher Routledge and mass‑market publisher Hodder Headline. Those regular trips meant I got to know the city, its people and its culture on a much deeper level than a typical weekend break. Paris really got under my skin. Recently, I had the chance to return, this time with my daughter, Hana. Unlike me, she didn’t know Paris at all. That contrast made the trip feel particularly special - I was seeing a city I love through her fresh eyes, while quietly revisiting all the layers of memory I had built up over those years on the road.
A Shared Love of Books
Hana is an avid reader, just like me, so rather than rushing around ticking off every “must‑see” sight, we planned our days around some of my favourite literary corners of the city.
One of our first stops was the beautiful Librairie Galignani on Rue de Rivoli. Often described as the first English‑language bookshop on the continent, it sits under the elegant arcades opposite the Tuileries. Inside, everything feels like a love letter to books - polished wooden shelves, floor‑to‑ceiling displays, rolling ladders that invite you to climb just a little higher in search of the perfect title. It is the kind of place where you instantly want to lose an afternoon among classic novels and art books.
Watching Hana wander those aisles, pulling out titles and running her fingers along the spines, felt like introducing her to an old friend.
From there, we crossed the river to another of my favourite haunts - Shakespeare and Company on the Left Bank. Just across from Notre‑Dame, this iconic English‑language bookshop is a creaky, crowded treasure trove of literature. Its little rooms, crooked staircases and cosy reading nooks are crammed with books and history in equal measure.
Shakespeare and Company is the modern‑day counterpart to Sylvia Beach’s original bookshop of the same name, which welcomed writers like James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. Even today, you can still feel that bohemian, creative energy in the air.
For Hana and me, it was a chance to stand in the footsteps of generations of readers and writers, to share a quiet moment in a place where words really matter.
Lessons From Selling Abroad
As we walked through Paris together, from bookshop to café to riverside stroll, I found myself reflecting on how those early work trips had shaped me without me fully realising it at the time.
Selling books in a foreign country is about so much more than presenting a catalogue and hoping for the best. It requires:
- Adapting your communication style to different personalities, expectations and cultural nuances.
- Building relationships across languages and borders, often starting from scratch in every new city.
- Listening carefully to what each bookseller really needs, then tailoring your pitch so it feels genuinely relevant to them.
- Joining the dots between products, people and place, so that what you are offering makes sense in that particular market.
Negotiating in another language, understanding local customs and finding common ground with people from very different backgrounds all demanded a mix of resilience, curiosity and emotional intelligence. At the time, it simply felt like “doing my job”. Looking back now, I can see that those experiences were quietly building skills that I still lean on every single day.
From Books to Travel
Today, my world revolves around travel rather than books, but the thread that connects those chapters of my life is remarkably strong.
In travel, just as in publishing, success comes down to understanding people - what excites them, what reassures them, what they really mean when they describe their “dream trip”. It is about reading between the lines of a brief, asking the right questions, and then curating something that feels like it could only have been designed for them.
All those years in foreign bookshops taught me how to:
- Put myself in someone else’s shoes.
- Translate needs into thoughtful recommendations.
- Build trust and long‑term relationships, not just quick transactions.
Those same skills now help me to shape journeys that feel personal, considered and meaningful.
New Stories, Same City
Travelling back to Paris with Hana reminded me that our past chapters never really disappear. They sit quietly in the background, ready to colour how we see the world and how we show up in our work.
Walking past familiar landmarks, slipping into favourite cafés and stepping once again into beloved bookshops was a chance to reconnect with the younger version of myself who used to arrive here, suitcase full of proofs and samples in hand, eager to make her mark.
This time, though, I was here as a mom and as someone whose work is now about helping others experience the world for themselves.
In my case, a love of books and cities has simply become a love of helping others find their own stories through travel.
