I walked into Café Roma (San Francisco) amid music blaring from the speakers. A man got up and said, "Hi," and I shook his hand.

Terrance Gelenter is a kindly man with a beard, long hair, and friendly blue eyes. He was wearing the kind of long coat that you see people wearing in Paris. He told me he was born in Brooklyn in a Jewish community and that his mom was a Moroccan Jew born in Casablanca, then he gave a little smile.

Terrance is a tour director and I decided to interview him because I believed that he offered the only tour that gave tourists the ability to actually see Paris through expatriate eyes .

"I want to show people something profound and interesting about Paris," he said. The reason he does the tours is because lots of tourists only see the visible first layer of Paris. He said if you walk down a street and look up five more feet than you did the previous day you will see a whole different Paris, and if you look up five more feet the next day there’s yet another Paris to see. The same thing happened to me when I was walking down a street in Paris and looked up and there was a mural and paintings I hadn’t noticed before.

Terrance also offers different choices of tours to take, like his original, "Paris When It Sizzled" which explains about the early 1900s writers and painters such as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I was interested about when Terrance first went Paris and he told me, "When I was 24 years old my grandparents went to France and traveled all over. They had a great time and when they came back they told me that Paris was the most civilized place in the world. They also told me I was missing something if I didn’t go to Paris. So after about 2 years later I went and had a fabulous time. I continued going back and after that I realized that lots of people were interested. I had a meeting with the people that were interested in all the things that I was, like old streets, cafes, and all the little old shops. So I persuaded them all to come to Paris with me and help me put money in my pocket. The next thing I knew I had a whole circle of friends in Paris, some of which helped me get started with the business."

I was curious who Terrance’s first real Parisian friend was, and he said, "John Baxter." John Baxter wrote books and Terrance met him through a writer friend. He met John Baxter at Les Deux Magots, a grand café in Paris. John Baxter wouldn’t let Terrance pay for anything at that first meeting, which is typical of how generous Parisians are. So that was how Terrance met his "key collaborator" for his tour business. After that, John introduced Terrance to more friends who also played a role in starting the business.

I had a great time interviewing Terrance, and I continued talking with him about Paris while we were on the sidewalk outside Café Roma. Terrance is a very interesting man and has a knack for creating tours.

Oliver Smith was born in October 1993 in Berkeley and now lives in Oakland with his mom, dad, and little brother. Oliver attends Park Day School in Oakland. His hobbies include playing baseball (now on the all-star team), soccer, swimming, watching movies, reading, and playing with his brother. Oliver has been to France several times, which sparked his interest in writing a magazine about it. He enjoys the food, culture, and cafés in France. Oliver’s favorite authors are Philip Pullman and J.R.R. Tolkien. He likes them because of the way they describe what is happening and how they paint a vivid picture of the scene through words.