Type of past tense

Question

Hello!

I noticed when reading the english version of the text that the past tense was a bit strange. I would only ever use 'had had...' if I was setting the scene for something that happened next. For example here it would be much more natural to say 'We visited all the main Parisian monuments', not 'we had visited'. Even if it was 20 years ago, I would still say that, unless there was another part to the sentence, eg. 'we had visited all the main Parisian monuments, but then we realised that xyz'.

I'm guessing the construction here is just to help with knowing what the construction should be in french, so I'm wondering if there's a lesson somewhere about when to use passé simple vs plus-que-parfait? I previously thought I would use plus-que-parfait when I would say in english eg. 'we had gone', and passé simple if I would say 'we went', but it seems like the situations when we would actually use those constructions might be different...

Thanks!

Kat =)

Frank Cooke · Answer

Hi Kathryn, let me first say that I don’t normally answer questions about French.  However, I am a native English speaker and I believe you may have misinterpreted the the contraction, I'd.  In the sentence "...but I'd never have imagined how much it would change me.", I think the contraction is 'I would' rather than 'I had'.  I read the sentence as I would never have imagined how much it would change me.  If you think of it like this, you can use the conditional tense of avoir together with the past participle of imaginer to arrive at their translation.