The Flore

So you arrive in Paris in the morning. You have either been lucky enough to get a couple hours of sleep on the plane, or you stayed awake every single minute watching French movies on the individual seat monitors. You get through customs without a snarle. Dump your bags at the hotel and go straight to the Cafe de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germaine. Order champage and omelettes. Then have a look around.

This is still the publishing district of Paris, 140 years after the cafe opened, the intellectual Left Bank you read about in school. So if you are in publishing, and you know who you are, this is your spot. While there are strange and interesting people here and there (especially if you sit inside, away from the tourists), there is a small disappointment. Hemingway is not here. Sartre is not here. Hell, Bono is not here.

But they all were.






The Cafe de Flore, and its two cousins, Deux Magot to your left, and Brasserie Lipp across the street, were the troika of cafes in the 1920's and 30s. Writers, artistis, philosophers would nurse a cup of coffee all day. However, you can barely sit for an hour before you have to get up and go someplace.

If you simply must get up and walk around, this is the fashion district. Shop your little heart out. A certain lovely person I know, in the last hour of the last day in Paris, bought six pairs of shoes. I love that story!

There are two fabulous cholocate shops within two blocks (Lauderie and Debauve et Gallais). The first has long lines snaking down the block. The second was the chocolatier to Louis XIV and is too snooty for words. But the chocolate tastes like lilacs.

And the Saint-Germaine is now THE stylish district in Paris. Here you WILL see fashionable women, elegantly attired. And the shops are to die for. But the guidebooks are wrong - more denim, less couture in the rest of Paris. Things change.

If you're really smart, you'll just sit in the Flore, drinking your espresso or wine or Perrier. Chat with somebody. Find the waiter who has been to New York, San Francisco, and Peoria. Call him "Monsieur Peoria" and see what happens.