Paris. Fabulous. But the great places are usually very crowded. I like to go in the dead of winter when the trees are all bare and black and shaking again the frigid wind. I like to go to the parks then. I like to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg and walk under the dark bare limbs of the gnarly old trees, with nothing to block my view of the Pantheon or the Luxembourg Palace. Somehow the statues appear that much more grave and lifelike in the half-light of a parisian winter with ravens perching on their granite heads.