Travel & Leisure


Paris, a bohemian flair

You wake up one morning, with a feeling of blues, as it hits home hard that in only a few days you will be leaving the magical City of Light. The countdown clock has started and the hours are mercilessly ticking away, getting closer and closer to that fatal word "end" that is soon to be forever recorded in your memory book. Don't despair! Now is the time to take a walk through Bohemian Paris. It will bring comfort to your soul and music to your heart.

The 6th district, a quarter loaded with history

Start heading in the direction of the 6th district towards the delightful Luxembourg Garden with its giant sequoia and the unending number of itineraries to discover. There you will find people walking along in pace with the muffled sounds of songs by the legendary French anarchist poet, Léo Ferré.
Saint Germain, the second-hand booksellers - the green-boxes along the Seine, the Luxembourg Garden, the Closerie des Lilas restaurant and bar where artists and writers have drunk since 1808, Montparnasse, the French Academy (la Coupole)..., Paris of the 60s, the flair of May 68, legendary places that symbolise a special way of life. A district where traces of the past are at every turn of the street: where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were said to have kept their literary zeal and love passions away from indiscreet eyes; where jazz madness swept the district and clubs cropped up such as Tabou, where Henry Miller felt that in this district "the streets sing, the stones talk, the houses drip history, glory and romance".

Café de Flore, the Deux Magots

Follow in the footsteps of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Musset, Balzac and Hugo, a whole succession of writers and poets have passed by here.
And why not court, like in days gone by, at the magnificent Medici fountain?
To experience the impassioned discussions or heated literary debates, you should definitely plan to drop by the Café de Flore, the Deux Magots or the Lipp brasserie, as these are authentic institutions of Parisian cultural life.


Place de Fürstenberg, unequalled romanticism

Take a little walk around one of the most beautiful squares of the romantic Paris of your dreams, the “place de Fürstenberg", with its elegant street lights and its paulownias, in full bloom in springtime. The Eugène Delacroix workshop (painter designated Head of the Romantic School), and a delightful museum today is waiting to be discovered at the back of a courtyard.
The entire surroundings- rue de Seine, rue Mazarine, that have become famous thanks to François Mitterrand - remain the dominion of art galleries, with several picturesque streets, including the Buci market with an intimate and provincial air.


Boulevard Montparnasse, a Bohemian flair is in the air

When it comes to the boulevard de Montparnasse, in the 14th district, the bohemian aura is here to stay. The notes of a rebel song are still floating around. Don't turn down the opportunity to spend a memorable moment and do take a romantic stroll along this broad avenue with its concentration of legendary cafés dotting the sidewalks.
Visit La Coupole, the French Academy where a circle of writers and painters got together, eloquently and boldly spoke out their opinions and even immortalized themselves in their paintings. Paris, a city that penetrates even into the deepest depths of your soul, over time, if you let it.

Mai 2008