2161“The person who has become my best friend here in Paris, I met her when we were in a student theatre group together,” our subject, Melissa Ladd, says in her audio clip. “This was my first year in Paris, so I was a bit timid, my language wasn’t very good.

“I declined an invitation to go out with her and other people from the student group. I made some stupid excuse about homework, which was ridiculous. She knew that I was making a lame excuse. And so she said this to me.

”I thought ‘yeah, too bad for me if I don’t go out there and hang out with people, try to speak French, even if I feel like a wallflower, if I can’t really understand what they’re talking about. If I don’t go out there and make friends I’m never going to get anywhere’. So 11 years later she’s my best friend and we hang out all the time, and my French is fluent. Viola.”

Melissa runs the Pret Mois Paris website, chronicling her adventures in the French capital. Taken on Pont Alexander III bridge on the SOTM World Tour.