Paris, France

Ernest Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast beginning in 1957 about the days he spent in Paris from 1921 and 1926 as a young man. It is about his Paris, full of cafes, writing, his compatriots, and poverty. He was part of the expatriates, a group of writers who moved to Paris in the 1920's and who symbolized the struggles and rewards of a writer's life. These writers were who Gertrude Stein coined as "the Lost Generation" and included literary greats such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Henry Miller.

Many of the places he wrote about are still present in Paris. "You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and pencil." - Hemingway

Many of Hemingway's haunts were in the 6th arrondissement, or the left bank. One of these were the Luxembourg gardens and Palace.

Today it is a wonderful place to read and relax, and many Parisian's take their lunch in these gardens. The Palace is now the seat of the French Senate. Today you can still visit the museum for 11 euros (9 euros for students and art instructors). It is open daily.

"You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, expaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de L'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were the belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly that it was only that he had forgotten to eat."

"But if the light was gone in the Luxembourg I would walk up through the gardens and stop in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus."

Close to his home lived his friend Gertrude Stein. The building still stands and there is a plaque in her honor.

"It was easy to get into the habit of stopping in at 27 rue de Fleurus late in the afternoon for the warmth and the great pictures and he conversation."

It was here where Stein made her comment about the lost generation:

-"You are all a génération perdue. That's what you are. That's what you all are, all of you who served in the war. You are a lost generation." That night, while he was walking home he thought about what she had said. "I thought that all generations were lost by something and always would be and stopped at the Lilas to keep the statue company and drank a cold beer before going home to the flat over the sawmill."

Unfortunately, the flat over the saw mill is longer there. It has been replaced by a modern apartment complex, which you can still visit at 113 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The picture to the left is his street and on the right side of the street is where his apartment used to be.

"Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful."

Follow the street south and you will find yourself directly at the Closerie de Lilas, his home cafe.

"The Closerie de Lilas was the nearest good café when we lived in the flat over the sawmill at 113 rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and it was one of the best cafés in Paris. It was warm inside in the winter and in the spring and fall it was very fine outside with the tables under the shade of the trees on the side where the statue of Marshal Ney was, and the square, regular tables under the big awnings along the boulevard."

Today you can visit this café at 171 Boulevard Montparnasse.

"I sat in the a corner with the afternoon light coming in over my shoulder and wrote in the notebook. The waiter brought me a café crème and I drank half of it when it cooled and left it on the table while I wrote."

Inside the Closerie de Lilas, at the bar, there is a small gold plaque with Hemingway's name, there to remind us of where he used to sit and write. Make sure you go in and visit. Have a beer or café crème in his honor..or even stop and eat the delectable food.

12 rue de L'Odéon was the location of Sylvia Beach's library entitled Shakespeare and Company. This building to the left is where is used to be. Today, the Shakespeare and Company is located near the Notre Dame Cathedral. Once again, there is a plaque to commemorate this once literary spot.

"In those days there was no money to buy books. I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de L'Odéon. On a cold windswept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living.
(...)
I was very shy when I first went into the bookshop and I did not have enough money on me to join the rental library. [Sylvia Beach] told me I could pay the deposit any time I had the money and made me out a card and said I could take as many books as I wished."

Paris is a literature hub, where there are centuries of amazing writers who were native or who moved there to be inspired. Here are a couple other places to visit if you so wish.... Know that this is only a short list of endless possibilities to explore the literature world of Paris.

Other places to visit that are not necessarily on the to see list are the cemeteries of Paris. They are beautifully maintained, and many famous people are buried in them. Following is a short list of some graves you may want to visit. At the entrance of each site, ask for a map that will give you the names and locations of each grave.

Cimetière Père Lachaise established by Napoleon I in 1804:
- Guillaume Apollinaire
- Honoré de Balzac
- Paul Eluard
- Jean de La Fontaine
- Molière
- Marcel Proust
- Gertrude Stein
- Oscar Wilde
For those who enjoy music...
- Frédéric Chopin
- Jim Morrison: the most visited grave
- Edith Piaf
- Rossini

Cimetière Montparnasse established in 1824:
- Charles Baudelaire
- Simone de Beauvoir
- Samuel Beckett
- Marguerite Duras
- Joris-Karl Huysmans
- Eugène Ionesco
- Joseph Kessel
- Guy de Maupassant
- Jean Paul Sartre

Cimetière de Montmartre established in 1795:
- Alexandre Dumas
- Stendhal
- Edgar Degas (for you art enthusiasts)
- François Truffaut (for you cinéistes)

The Pantheon was originally built as a church in 1789 and has now become a famous burial ground:
- Alexandre Dumas
- Victor Hugo
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
- Voltaire
- Emile Zola
- Scientists Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie are also interred here.

Along with the cemeteries, do not forget to visit the catacombs, which used to be situated right outside the city. At the end of the 18th century, the most important cemetery of Paris was closed due to sanitation issues. The bones were transferred to the catacombs beginning 1785. Millions of bones followed thereafter.
Now, here lies the resting place of millions of peoples bones and it is open to the pubic to visit. It is not for the fainthearted. Not only is it 2 km of underground tunnels, 130 steps down and 83 steps up, there are endless caves and caverns filled with real human bones arranged in eerily beautiful sculptures throughout the damp tunnels.

Open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the metro stop Denfert-Rochereau.

"Paris has beneath it another Paris, a Paris of sewers, which has its own streets, squares, lanes, arteries, and circulation." -Victor Hugo

Meet at the Pont D'Alma on the left bank for a tour of the sewers. Entitled "Les Egouts de Paris", you learn about the entire history of the Parisian sewer system- from the Middle ages, to the Renaissance, to today. You will be surprised at how important a working sewer system is and just how much work it is to create and maintain.

Open every day except Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. (in the summer) and from 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. (in the winter). Tickets are 4.10 euros and 3.30 euros for students. Metro stop is Pont de L'Alma.