Went out to dinner last night with a good friend of mine who now works in the US Embassy here. Here he is (below) outside of Deux Magots, one of the most famous cafes in Paris. (John says he doesn't read the blog, so I figured it was okay to put up his pic, since he won't know :-).
Now Deux Magots, and the neighborhood it's in, St.-Germain-des-Pres, is in Paris' "Left Bank." Big battles ensue in this town over left-bankers and right-bankers. The right-bankers find the left bank kind of snooty (and touristy I suppose). I'm not sure what the left-bankers think of the right-bankers (probably that they live in scary neighborhoods). I suppose I'm a left-banker - it's where I went to school here, it's where I lived here, and it's where I live here now. It's comfortable, and historic, and just oozes what an American expects of Paris.
I love this description of Deux Magots and the surrounding neighborhood from the International Herald Tribune:
Jean-Paul Sartre lived with his mother above the Deux Magots, Simone de Beauvoir lived at the nearby Hotel Louisiane and noted that the style for cafe intellectuals was to "spend the day exhaling disgust in blase little phrases cut by yawns."What a wickedly wonderful sentence.
And this is the very old, but I believe rebuilt, church across the street from the Deux Magots - it's the Eglise St.-Germain-des-Pres, I think.
On the way back from dinner, on the Rue de Rennes, there was this big building that they put neon lights all over the facade. It looked quite cool from a distance, kind of hideous up close. But I like the way it glowed off the other buildings in the area, like this one below.
A cafe further down the block, still getting some of the neon glow, and still a few customers at 1130 at night.
And finally, a pic of me having a drink (a kir) at John's place before heading out to dinner. It's just such a beautiful city. Every corner inspires (well, not every corner, but a lot of neighborhoods, like mine and John's (we live about 5 blocks from each other), are just so pretty no matter where you look). Paris really is an amazing place.
And yes, I am wearing a long-sleeve shirt. It got down to 56 degrees last night ;-)
