For many travelers, Paris is Parisland. Here’s the Eiffel Tower. Let’s take aboat ride along the Seine. Ah, the Champs Elysees. Five museums on the list —
let’s whip through them. And, late at night, we’ve got to find that nightclub where the girls kick up their …heels.
Others — that’s my brood and me — go to Paris for the quiet. We sit in cafes for hours. We settle on parkbenches. We take long walks on nearly empty streets. It’s still Parisland, just another kind: an open-air library, a set for dreaming, an urban pillow for outdoor naps.
From a review of Quiet Corners of Paris
Here is a curated list for the flaneur/flaneuse to pack on your messenger bag.
And here, more on the The Flâneur: A Radical-Chic Icon
‘Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs’ and Zolas’ ‘The Ladies Delight’ both make captivating reading whilst in Paris.
The first sketches the story of ‘Shakespeare and Company’ on the Left Bank, and Zolas’ tale, written in the 1880s, is set in a department store.
Either would make for perfect reading in cafes or on park benches.
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These are wonderful suggestions…and I need couple of months here! I met a Russian girl who suggested ” Dinner in Paris”…while my good friend Bruce tuned me into ” The Years Of The Banquet”. Delicieux!
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It is actually called “The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France from 1881 to World War I”
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La Belle Epoque must have been the most exciting time to be in Paris. In the same way that Chicago or New Orleans must have been the place to be during the Roaring Twenties. London in the 1960s. What fun it would be to travel freely back through the years, a decade at a time, choosing a different city for every stop.
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Indeed. But, to be in the Paris in the Twenties! Oh, heart!
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[…] finally, my very own books for Parisian flanerie. Merci, mon share:Like this:LikeBe the first to like this […]
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