Shakespeare & Company – KEVIN CRAIG

Paris – Day 6 – September 14th – From Emmanuel’s Père Lachaise to the River Seine!

Thursday the 14th of September was going to be a FULL day! It was going to begin with a long walk to Père Lachaise cemetery and it would end with a long walk back to the hotel from the Bateaux Parisiens dinner cruise. And those were only the bookends to our jammed packed day!

This was our second day, and our third tour with Emmanuel’s Hidden Gems! We were excited to see the hidden gems he would regale us with in Père Lachaise. We visited this renown cemetery on our own back in 2021 and were able to find all the more famous tombs with the assistance of Google Maps. No, really, we were. Just search “Jim Morrison’s grave” while standing in Père Lachaise and the lovely Google lady will take you right to it! But we wanted to see what else the cemetery had to offer. What did Emmanuel curate for us that we wouldn’t otherwise see?

Emmanuel did not disappoint. We loved his choice of graves and the amusing and interesting anecdotes that came with them!

Again, I will try to convince the reader how wonderful Emmanuel’s tour was without giving away any of his carefully curated secrets. The point of his tours is that he takes you to Paris’s hidden gems, not all the places that ALL the tourists go to. This was true of his Père Lachaise tour as well.

I will just say one more thing… and it will be veiled. The price of the ticket was worth it just for the anecdote that went along with this enchanting tomb that Emmanuel took us to. And you wouldn’t guess in a million years the story of this grave…

The story of two men frozen in time together…take Emmanuel’s Hidden Gems tour of Père Lachaise to get the scoop. It’s amazing!

The pre-Autumn light made it a perfect time to view the cemetery. We saw such wondrous things!

Click this link for: EMMANUEL’S HIDDEN GEMS FACEBOOK GROUP

The best way to contact Emmanuel is through his Facebook PAGE. Once there, just send him a message. This is how we booked all 4 of our tours with him. We did it months in advance. You pay in cash on the day of the tour.

Click this link for: EMMANUEL’S HIDDEN GEMS FACEBOOK PAGE

The cemetery was really just such a lovely place to wander, and Emmanuel made our second visit here so much more special. We connected more with the stories of some of the people residing in this amazing place.

The neighbourhood of the dead. So peaceful.

After the cemetery it was time to say goodbye to Emmanuel for another day. One more tour to go!

We walked to Place des Vosges to see the home (and now museum) of Victor Hugo. But along the way, we scouted out a place to stop in for a quick bite.

We found Apsara – Bar Tabac & Restaurant Asiatique. This was little more than a corner store, with tables to the side corner where we sat and had the most delicious Pad Thai! Always give the little places a go in Paris…they’ll surprise you! This place had amazing food!

Pad Thai at Apsara – Bar Tabac & Restaurant Asiatique.

Victor Hugo’s house in one of the corners of Place des Vosges was lovely. You need give yourself only twenty to thirty minutes for this one. Well worth the trip, though! And Place des Vosges is extraordinarily picturesque! Take some time to look around while you’re there!

This quirky little room reminded me so much of our hotel lobby, I thought they must have gotten the inspiration from Victor himself!

This man is credited with the revival of interest in Notre-Dame Cathedral, and possibly with saving it from certain destruction. His Hunchback birthed a whole new interest in restoring the cathedral to its formal glory!

Next on the agenda was the Panthéon. Yes, we saw this building in 2021. We went back for TWO things. Number one, we missed the timed tour of the rooftop during our first trip. Number two, we visited just prior to the induction of the great Josephine Baker. We had to go back to pay tribute to this amazing trailblazing woman!

The rooftop views were incredible. So glad we timed it right this trip!

The view of the dome of the Pantheon just prior to getting to the top!

The tower you can view from all the high places in Paris, except from the view within the tower itself. 😉

Possibly my favourite church in Paris. Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. This is the church that Gil lingered at prior to getting picked up and whisked into the Lost Generation’s 1920s world in *MIDNIGHT IN PARIS*!

Here it is! This is, I should add, a CENOTAPH. Josephine Baker is not actually buried here. This is such an honour and such a well-deserved one!

Josephine Baker – June 3rd, 1906 – April 12th, 1975. Born St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Died Paris, France.

Of course, we stopped to see Foucault’s pendulum! Look it up. It’s a great story!

Not just a pretty picture…the more you know!

Of course, we had to actually visit the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont (Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont). We were right there, and I did say it was possibly my favourite Paris church.

Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont (Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont), or the MIDNIGHT IN PARIS rendezvous sight!

Next up was the Conciergerie. This has always struck me as a beautiful building on the outside. I wanted to see the inside. This was where Marie Antoinette spent her last days before very carelessly losing her head (sorry, decapitation humour is not funny).

You can put this on your agenda if you’re in the area and don’t have a lot of time. I think it took us all of twenty minutes. Gorgeous, but sparse.

Next up was Crypte Archéologique de l’İle de la Cité. This too was a quick tour. Another monument we had not yet visited. This is a museum displaying ancient, Medieval & more recent remains found under Notre Dame. Quite fascinating and worth this visit! It’s directly in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral and often ignored. Visit!

Boy, did we take a lot in on this day! It’s exhausting just looking back on it and realizing how much we did!

Naturally, we went to Shakespeare & Company again. We were in the area and the day before Michael surprised me with a gift certificate for the store that my daughter and her family arranged for me for my birthday!

Part of my haul from Shakespeare & Company!

The store even had a little message for me from my family back home! Soooo sweet!

We then took a long casual walk from the 4th arrondissement to the 7th! We had a date for a dinner cruise with Bateaux Parisiens!

First a fueling! We walked into another place we found along the way…this time, just for a drink.

Rosie’s Smokehouse! We liked it here…this was our first of three visits. Just stumbled upon it while walking by…

Some of the things we viewed along the way…

The last event of our DAY! A dinner cruise.

We arranged for a window seat on our Bateaux Parisiens dinner cruise. Best choice ever! Here’s the avant le vin shot…

The night blurred on, the wine flowed, the food amazed, the views stunned and it was all very very…

Après le vin…

The cruise is planned so that you arrive back at the base of the tower around the time of THE SPARKLE!

All that glitters is gold, all that sparkles is iconic…

That was our day! It was a LOT. But I don’t think I would have had it any other way!

Looking back, it was a day of many footsteps!

Takeaway? Must dos are EMMANUEL’S HIDDEN GEMS, PANTHEON, and BATEAUX PARISIENS dinner cruise! Put them on your Paris itinerary. You’ll thank me. I wouldn’t NOT recommend anything from this day, but these are the standouts!

Next up is Day 7…

LINK TO PREVIOUS DAY.

LINK TO NEXT DAY.

There is Never Any End to Paris

Hemingway knew about Paris and how it infiltrates you, once you’ve been there. He understood the ever-present need one has to return there, like a salmon running upstream and fighting against the current to return, to return, to return…for Paris gets into you, and calls you back. For Paris is a moveable feast hard to ignore, hard to stay away from. Hard, even, to turn away from.

My treasured copy of ***Shakespeare and Company: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart*** purchased at Shakespeare & Company in October, 2021. My favourite book!

We are returning to the magical city! Our passage is booked. We will spend a little of our September (2023) walking the streets of Paris once again. Two weeks this time. We will see the places we’ve already seen and some we missed. We will venture daily from our hotel on the outskirts of Le Marais this time. Nothing against the 9th Arrondissement (where we stayed in 2021) or Île Saint-Louis in the 4th (where I stayed in 2014)! We loved staying so close to the Moulin Rouge and Boulevard de Clichy! And I really enjoyed staying down the street from Notre-Dame! But it will be nice to stay in a different neighbourhood…experience a different vibe yet again. Besides, the Saint-Louis is only a stone’s throw from the Marais!

But this is still months away. 225 days, to be exact. Not that I’m counting. But let’s just be honest…I’m counting.

Having just disembarked from Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas not quite two weeks ago, I am already counting down to our next adventure with a degree of desperation.

Many of our mornings and nights in October of 2021 were spent walking into and out of our neighbourhood…which meant crossing the Champs-Élysées repeatedly. Look! There’s the Arc!

As we map out our stay in Paris, I already worry about our itinerary. Will we see everything we want to see? Will we forget something only to remember it when we’re on the plane on the way home? Will we have enough time? I’m already experiencing FOMO!

On our last night in Paris in October, 2021, we ran up the street from our hotel for one last view of the Moulin Rouge. Our last selfie in Paris that year. (PS: The bus did *not* hit us!)

This trip’s itinerary will have a mix of overlapping items with the last trip, as well as a lot of new items. There are some things I want to see during every Paris trip. Some of the new ones will be Paris Disney and Mont-Saint-Michel. As well as a few other sights we missed. I’m dying to visit Montparnasse!

We have 2 walking tours booked with Emmanuel’s Hidden Gems (Link is for his Instagram…he can also be found on Facebook). We’ve heard so many good things about Emmanuel’s tours in the Paris Facebook groups we’re in. We have to try him! We booked Montmartre and Le Marais, two places I adore.

Also, though a picnic was on our itinerary for 2021, we didn’t quite make it. It is my goal to do it this time around. It was great fun with the Left Bank Writers Retreat in 2014! Maybe somewhere in or near Square du Vert-Galant! That is the goal, anyway! We’ll get a baguette, some cheese, a little wine…it’ll be magic!

There are so many museums in Paris, that we only saw a fraction of them during our last visit. We’ll hit a few that we missed and probably do one or two that we have already visited. It would take a month to see all of the Louvre. It is impossible to see it all in one visit. Also, what’s a trip to Paris without going to Shakespeare & Company?! I couldn’t imagine it! I also want to go to their new(ish) coffee shop next door. I don’t know why we didn’t think to go there on our last visit.

One of my favourite days in Paris in 2021 was our DAY OF THE DEAD! This turned out to be a thematic day filled with all things dead, from the Catacombes, to Père Lachaise Cemetery to the Panthéon. It would have been the perfect Paris day, had the booked tour through Père Lachaise been unceremoniously and without warning cancelled. We had to wander through that city of a cemetery on our own. We still managed to find a lot of the graves we wanted to visit, but without the tour we felt we did not do it justice. Hopefully, now that we’re further along in this forever-pandemic, the tour we book this time won’t be cancelled at the last minute. I want context with my stroll through the cemetery.

La Closerie des Lilas, a must when in Paris for me!

The list of restaurants is growing so quickly, I’m afraid we won’t have enough days to visit all the ones we wish to see. We will be narrowing it down in the coming weeks. One I like to return to is La Closerie des Lilas. It’s not incredible, but it has an incredible literary history. It draws me to it. Maybe just a cocktail next time? Maybe with an appetizer?

From my June 2014 trip with Left Bank Writers Retreat…new writer friend, Nina! Atop the Arc.

If we miss anything, I suppose we can always do it on our NEXT trip after this one. There will always be a next trip, right?! There is never any end to Paris!

Only 225 days to go. That seems like a lifetime when there are several inches of snow on the ground and a cold-snap is threatening to overwhelm us. The countdown is on…

Paris or bust!

I’m also an author. Pick up my short book 7 – Paris at Sunset and Into the Night, and Other Stories at Amazon. 7 short stories, some of which are set in Paris, for less than $1!

Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart – Shakespeare & Company, Paris

I have now been home from Paris about one and a half weeks. Paris never lasts long enough, does it?!

I thought that by bringing a great nugget of Paris home with me, I would somehow prolong my visit…if only in my head and in my heart. But like being given your favourite treats and attempting to make them last, I have now devoured the last of that great nugget I carried back across the pond with me.

The nugget of which I speak? A book. A tome I thought would last a little longer. A tome I devoured all too quickly!

Shakespeare & Company Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart.

This is going down as THE most magical book I ever read. Read isn’t even right…it doesn’t cover what I did. I fell into this book. I immersed myself in this book. So divine, it was!

To think, Michael practically had to twist my arm to get me to buy it during our first visit this time around to the iconic and beautiful madhouse of books. There’s no place quite like Shakespeare & Company Bookstore at 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, Paris. I hemmed and I hawed. The price would put it somewhere in the vicinity of extravagant as a self-purchase and I really wrung my hands over it. Should I? Shouldn’t I? In the end, Michael prevailed. He talked me into purchasing the thing I MOST wanted to purchase in all the store.

I HAVE NO REGRETS. Such a beautiful rambling read through the history of my favourite international bookstore, which also, itself, has a tendency to ramble through space and time.

George Whitman was a formidable presence in the universe. I believed that before opening the book, and I know it now. He was a magician with a gravitational pull that rivaled the universe itself. He was the moon, orchestrating the tides of ‘Tumbleweeds’ in and out of his magical bookstore for decades.

I’ve loved Shakespeare & Company since I first learned about its first incarnation, created by Sylvia Beach and found originally at 8 Rue Dupuytren and then the bigger location at 12 rue de l’Odéon. George Whitman was the perfect successor of the name (Whitman changed the name of the current day Shakespeare & Company from Le Mistral in 1964, presumably with Ms. Beach’s blessing). He carried with him the same kind of generosity of heart and spirit as his predecessor.

If you want to read an extraordinarily moving history of one of the world’s most astonishing bookstores, you need to have this book in your life. It would also make a fantastic present for the literary lover in your life. I know I’m going to cherish my copy forever. Now that I’ve read it, I know with certainty that it’s a book that will give me much joy in future re-readings. I could not put it down. Wandering through its pages felt much the same as wandering through the crooked little rooms and alcoves and mystery spaces splattered with books and things inside Shakespeare & Company itself.

You can purchase this wild ride through history directly through the Shakespeare & Co Online Bookstore!!