Childhood anxieties, childhood fears, never disappear entirely. They fade, but not away.

We started out to see some of Paris on foot with him, stopping at the famous Café de la Paix, where you were supposed to see everyone you knew if you just sat there long enough. To sit at a sidewalk café having coffee or a drink – the sound and sight of France all around. The Champs-Elysées was incredible – the chestnut trees – how could one city attain such perfection? Who had dreamed it up? Who had made it all come true? I wanted to see every corner of it.

There is always the fear that a wonder of the world can’t live up to expectations. Not so. The Taj Mahal was breathtakingly beautiful – if anything, better even than I’d been told. Beauty like that is too dazzling to be imagined.