A Stroll Around the Left Bank

It's amazing how alive Paris is. A walk around Paris at an time of day in any season, will leave you richer for the experience. Last visit we stayed at this gorgeous 17th Century hotel right on the Seine, opposite Notre Dame. We didn't have to walk far to be immersed into Parisian life. Have a stroll with me...

Right opposite our hotel were the Left Bank artists and booksellers. Great for browsing.

Always confronting to see the homeless in any city, and in Paris it's no different.

Love these little water fountains. Water for all.

There's always something happening on the bridges. Check out the locks in the background.

Don't you love these symbols of eternal love? I'm off to write a story about them...

Hope you enjoyed your stroll through Paris. Call again...

Sorry I've been absent. Am working hard on my stories!

Hopefully I will have my first e-book out in December if all goes to plan. I am busy doing final edits on my first collections of short stories that will be published on Amazon and Smashwords. All have a Paris motif.

Here are some travel tips from the Right Way to Travel, a favourite website of mine that has heaps of tips on how to write about your travels.

Ziploc bags are just as versatile and can even be used to keep your
clothes wrinkle-free. Use them on your next trip to...

1.      Keep your important documents together -- your passport and
boarding pass while you’re hanging around the airport, for example.

2.      Sort your currencies -- dollars in one bag, euros in another,
etc...

3.      Make a “kit” of all the things you want to bring on your trip but
don’t need until your trip home: return trip itinerary, cab fare for
the ride home, house keys, etc.

4.      Keep precious items safe. Put the item you want to protect in a
Ziploc bag and close it almost fully, leaving just enough open to fit
a straw through. Then, inflate the bag, remove the straw, and close
the Ziploc completely. Presto...self-made bubble-wrap!

5.      Store your liquids or powders to prevent mess.

6. Keep your clothes wrinkle-free. Larger bags can hold rolled
clothing -- which makes for neater packing and less wrinkled outfits
on the other side.

7.      Make a pillow. Fill a large Ziploc with cotton balls for a light
and compact travel pillow.

8.      Keep your luggage contents clean. Wrap your shoes in bags to
prevent dirt from their soles rubbing off on other items.

My Parisian 'Moveable Feast.' Following Ernest Hemingway and his pals...

You always have to visit the Arc de Triomphe

I love the old jokes about people coming home from holidays and showing their photos while everyone sits around with glassy looks on their faces. I don't want to be that person inflicting boredom, but I'm launching into a little travel-inspired series, showing you some wonderful Paris/France pics.

So let's get this tour started. You can leave any time you want, ha ha! But I hope you'll at least see a few pics you like or read something that will encourage you to leave a comment.

When you visit someplace marvellous for the first time, you're a tourist. Your visit is usually a frenzy of checking out the famous landmarks, monuments, museums, art galleries...it has to be done. Who could visit London and not see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey? Who could visit Berlin and not see the Brandenburg Gate? Who could visit Paris and not see, er, let me see, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysee, the Seine, Sacre Coeur, Versailles, the Louvre, Notre Dame, St Chapelle, the bridges, the famous cafes..

Sacre Coeur, atop Montmarte, always worth of a return visit

Sure, we have to see these marvels when we travel. But the beauty of visiting someplace marvellous for the second, third or even the fourth time, is that we don't have to do these things; we're free to explore and find the beating heart of a place. This is how I felt when I visited Paris yet again. It wasn't about the monuments, although we revisited our favourite haunts, but this time it was more about getting into the heart of things and this included the bygone era of the literary Paris when it was the mecca for struggling artists, writers and actors.

We (husband and I) made our headquarters in this gorgeous little rustic hotel, Les Degres de Notre Dame.

This hotel was perfect for our stay. 

Notre Dame was just across the bridge.

We were given the 'Romantic Room' so that was sweet. Large by Parisian standards, with even a sitting room, this room was a great base for our stay. It is on the Left Bank in the Latin Quarter, across from Notre Dame and a stone's throw from Shakespeare and Company. Well, wasn't this a good start for a more literary focus?

Shakespeare and Company, just a few streets away! Doing very nicely thanks they tell me!

I trotted off to Shakespeare and Company to buy A Moveable Feast (they have a whole shelf of Hemingway's books. And of the other Lost Generation writers like Scott Fitzgerald and co.) After a day packed with adventure and a dinner in 'cheap street' in the Latin Quarter (3 courses for 10 - 15 euro, good sturdy peasant food like mussels, Bouef Bourguignon, creme brulee (gotta have my creme brulee!)) I'd retire with A Moveable Feast. It somehow took on more of a gloss reading it a short walk from where Hemingway lived most of his early, hungry days in Paris in his twenties and Paris' twenties.

Well, what would you choose? This one?

Or this one? Hmm, decisions...or should we just find a Maccas, more in Hemingway's price range?

I love most of Hemingway's work and I greatly admire his work ethic - writing from 5am - midday every day nearly without fail, always on the search for the 'one true sentence.' As Roland  posted recently, Hemingway said, 'you write to rewrite.' He drew heavily from his life experiences and these were enhanced with large brush strokes in his novels, some recreated into film with a lot of input from Papa himself.

 On a previous visit, I followed in the footsteps of some of my Parisian-based idols like Collette and Victor Hugo, and I did start walking up Hemingway's street, but just wasn't in the mood. This time I was.

I checked out Victor Hugo's apartments again at the Place des Vosges. Still kept as a shrine to him.  Then had coffee in the cafe Victor Hugo in the passages below his apartment. 

74 rue Cardinal Lemoine took on a mesmerising glow during my reading of Hemingway's novel. I wanted to see the apartment building he talks about so much. Where he shivered along with his wife Hedley as they were too poor for heating other than a few sticks. They had no private bathroom. No wonder Hemingway went to cafes to write! He was just too cold at home! So what were his writing habits? At this stage of his life he relied heavily on input from great writers like Gertrude Stein, Scott Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound, all living in Paris at the same time. After his morning spent writing, he'd meet up either casually or planned with one of the 'greats.' Remember he was in his twenties and hadn't yet written a novel. Of course he didn't always take the advice on his writing these luminaries offered; he was very sure about his own talents.

A waiter snapped us drinking rhum babas at the Cafe de Flore in 2004, one of Hemingway's favourite writing places.

So one afternoon, we stepped out of our hotel, headed to the quai, nodded to Notre Dame, and turned right. We walked past the booksellers and artists until we were opposite the Isle St Louis, then turned right into rue Cardinal Lemoine. It is quite a long street by Parisian suburban standards, but it was fun meandering our way upwards away from the Seine. Hemingway describes it as a 'steep street', which it is anything but. Not many steep streets in Paris except around Montmarte.

Hemingway admiring his Paris - source Google images

I guess it felt steep when dressed in your overcoat, feeling full of whisky and rum and shivering with cold. Anyway, to the left we passed James Joyce's Paris home, quite an enclave and much grander than Hemingway's (Joyce had Ulysses under his belt), but we soldiered on right to the top, to the last number in rue Cardinal Lemoine, no 74.

Knocking on Hemingway's door, but no-one's home

He said he lived on the third floor so we had a conversation wondering which was actually his apartment and who lived in it now. Sadly there was no one to ask (turns out they were all having dinner in Place Contrascarpe just down from Hemingway's apartment.) Fittingly there is now a bookshop underneath. Hemingway would have liked that. He says in A Moveable Feast that he loved that apartment, he loved the view and its proximity to everything he needed - his friends, his cafes, his beloved Seine where he would people watch and imagine his stories. He always left his writing when he knew what would happen next so his subconscious could work on it.

We should all be so lucky to live in an apartment like he did while writing in Paris.


The full article can be found on my writing blog, L'Aussie Writing.


Hope everyone is well. I'll be around to catch up when I can!


What have you been doing this past month while I've been jaunting around the world?

Troyes in France. First stop after Paris. What a gorgeous city! Reprint of my A - z Challenge entry.

Sorry I've been away so long, but with my writing, then participating in the A - Z Challenge where I've been blogging every day on my travel blog, I've been slow getting back to Paris! And on June 16 I'm heading back to Paris, then travelling for a month. What exciting stories I'll have to tell you then.

Anyway, for the T in the A -  Challenge I wrote about Troyes in France, a little south of Paris, in the Champagne Region. To kick off PichetsinParis again, I thought I'd reprint my post here. Enjoy...

Map of France showing the Champagne Region with Troyes in the South-West

When I first hit France in 2004, I was on a mission to get to Italy. Sounds crazy, but Aussie travellers are crazy. After over 20 hours on a plane to reach civilization (((snicker, snicker))), we hit the road running, or speeding, whatever. So after ooing and aahing as the plane hovered over Charles de Gaulle Airport, our schedule meant we had a rugged drive ahead to get to a little hill town north of Rome. Well, why didn't we fly into Rome then? Well, there was a reason but I quite forget now!

Champagne Region. See Troyes in the South West. (We got back to Champagne in 2008 where we visited many of the other Champagne towns and drank lots of, yeah, you got it...)

Anyhoo, tiredness set in as it does when you've been in a plane for a day, so we we managed to find our way out of Paris after only one wrong turn, then found the A-whatever, and headed south. No fun navigating as night set in along with jet lag, so where to lay our weary heads? Oh, there on the map, an interesting little town, Troyes, let's investigate. (Even though our itinerary was micro-managed by our travel agent, she had forgotten to book us in anywhere on our first night!) We brought her flowers when we returned...

After driving round and round looking for the actual city, we finally hit paydirt and stumbled upon the medieval centre. Woo hoo. We like old stuff. I guarded the car while the hubs found us a room at the inn, or the Best Western whatever. Well, what do you know? Oui, oui, tres possible.

Our first night in France was spent in a hotel right in the medieval centre and the badly-maligned French staff couldn't do enough to help travel-weary Aussies - "Have another bottle of Evian, s'il vous plait." I thought they'd be tu-ing us before too long. Desole, our dining room is closed, but there is a good Chinese down the road - (((guffaw))). So our first meal in France was Chinese. Ah, such a global society! It was tres delicious so not complaining.

We staggered to bed (you know you can't get a decent wine in a Chinese restaurant, must have been all that Evian) and slept the sleep of the blissfully happy.

Ah, but next morning we really knew what happiness was! Hitting the cobblestone streets, we were blown away by the picture-postcard perfection (yes, it brings out the poet in me) of a medieval town dusted in icing sugar snow, with happy Christmas music wafting through the chilly air. Yes, Aussies also like to hit Europe at Christmas to escape the oven that is Australia at that happy time. We like to experience a 'white' Christmas once in our lives with not a prawn or a bbq in sight for once!

So, after ordering a petit dejeuner in a delightfully authentic bistro, with all these French people (((ha ha))) and little silver trays with bills, money, whatever - where's the Euros?, I was able to use my recently-revised French language skills on the uber-efficient waiter. It all worked so seamlessly that the hubs (who speaks only Strine) didn't even know I'd ordered until bowls of steaming cafe au lait and croissants came winging out way and were plonked without ceremony on the timbered table. Ah, who has tasted more delicious coffee or croissants? They tasted like nectar to a couple of starving Aussies.

Petit dejeuner over with, let's hit the streets. Bit bumpy these cobblestones and it doesn't help that they've been dusted with snow overnight, but how completely exotic! Instead of donning the bikini and hitting the waves, here we are rugged up in overcoats, boots, scarves, gloves and beanies, walking up streets of half-timbered houses which looked like they could topple any minute, all accompanied by dulcet tones of French music. Oh la la. France stole my heart that magical morning in Troyes.

Finding Troyes was just the beginning of a red-hot love affair that rages on...

Here are some of the delights of Troyes. Every time we have a rave to a French person, telling them about our Troyes' experience, they look blank. Reason? Recently found out they pronounce it Trwah and were too polite to tell us!

Here's the blurb:

Troyes (pronounced trwah), was once a center for stained glass and textiles. It was also the home of the 12th-century poet Chrétien de Troyes, who wrote versions of the Arthurian legends, and of andouillettes, sausages, made in Troyes from tripe and famous throughout France.

The many cobblestone, pedestrians-only streets in the town's historic center give Troyes an intimacy that belies its population of over 60,000. An outline of the city looks like a Champagne cork with the medieval and artisanal vestiges mostly in the St.-Jean quarter at the base, and the administrative and ecclesiastical center at the head.

Go here if you'd like to learn more abou this gorgeous place.

Denise<3

Sitting at a typewriter and opening veins...

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.                        -Red Smith

That's what I'm doing for the next month, opening veins. Sorry, I won't be posting, but I will visit occasionally. I'll be back early April.

I have a lot of writing to do before I embark on my month-long sojourn in mid-June to Paris, the Dordogne, S.W. France, Andorra, San Sebastian Spain, Bordeaux, Morocco, Paris...

Preparing to return to France - getting nostalgic. I'll share some pics with you.

My last trip to France was in 2007/2008. I'm in the process of planning the next trip, about June/July this year. So naturally my thoughts are turning to France (er, not that they ever leave for long.) The itinerary will begin in Paris as usual, where we'll grab the TGV (the fast train) and head straight down to the Dordogne, a region we just missed last visit. We will get off in our allotted 3 minutes at Angouleme, have a little rest after the 20-odd hour flight then drive around the Dordogne. There we will see vinyards, old chateaux, historic caves etc. I will do a post of the region as I do my research.

So for now, here are some pics from the last trip.

Wandering around Fontvereau in the Loire Valley at Halloween.

In Cardinal Richeleau's forest. His chateau is no longer with us.

Chateaux Villandry, the one with the huge vege garden. I've previously posted about this lovely chateau. Go here if you want to see more.

Descending the staircase at Villandry.

The husb pumping for water at the old Langeis Fortress.

Better leave Langeis before they put up the drawbridge (which they do every night and morning.) Never know, there might be maurading crusaders hitting town.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip through memory lane.

South of France - how did I wait this long? Nice, Nice, Nice...

Next to Paris, one of my favourite places in France would be the South of France, so much so that one of my novels has a chunk devoted to this delightful part of the world. Whilst travelling (always in winter as that was when our holidays fell) my husband and I used to get SO COLD! Coming from an Australian summer to a northern winter was no joke at times, so what did we do? We jumped on one or two of those ridiculously (to an Aussie) low-priced planes to Nice - you know EasyJet etc. I'll never forget my first flight from Dublin to Nice, where the plane trolled up the Cote d'Azur on a sparkling sunny winter day, with the Mediterranean glistening and twinkling - it was breathtaking!

Here are some pics of glorious Nice! Love it! I want to be there now!

Our first sunset in Nice, taken from Castle Hill. Watching the sunset in Nice is like a religious experience. It seems everyone comes out to see the glorious display which goes for what seems hours!

Who wouldn't love Nice at sunset?

Let's start the day with breakfast 'on the beach' just off the Promenade des Anglais. Not enraptured with the pebbly beach, but it does have a certain charm.

Don't you love these pastel buildings. We got lost in these passages a few times, but how good was that!

This is my favourite building in Nice. So Moorish!

Let's wait for sunset again. Another perfect day in Nice, but still need the coat!

I hope you liked my reminiscence of Nice. I will be back to share more next week...

Christmas in Paris in the past, unfortunately not in 2010

I have been blessed to spend two Christmas seasons in Paris and the Isle de Paris. I always get nostalgic for Europe when Christmas approaches as it is so refreshing to feel the cold, see the snow and enjoy a hot dinner.

In Australia Christmas Dinner should always be prawns and salads, but you'd be surprised how many of us in a fit of mental abberation, cook a roast! Sweat! Sweat! There is a lot of jumping in the swimming pool involved between bastings!

I hope you enjoy a Paris Christmas with me.

Champs Elysee is the place to be for gorgeousness, and that's not just moi! Ha! Ha! I'm dazzled as you see!

Getting used to the delightful lights. What a lovely night! I lived in my fur coat I bought at the Camden Place markets in London and my fur cloche sold to me by a couple of dames near the Notre Dame cathedral. Would have frozen otherwise.

A stroll through the Galleries during the day. Gallerie Vivienne is one of my favourites - oh that art nouveau!

Caught heading into the Gallerie de Champs Elysee for my (shh) Starbucks! I like my cafe with lots of milk and the French think it's against the law after le petit dejeuner! A surprising number of Parsiennes shared a lounge with us. Lucky weren't they? I swear I didn't have Macdonalds while I was in there! But I bought some lovely tee shirts and gifts for the family sweating at home.

Hey, I just can't get enough of those lights and shop dekkies! Over the top! Even the cars screeching around the Arc de Triomphe roundabout look cute tonight.

Hmm. Got to catch a show at the Moulin Rouge, but not tonight in my jeans! Eewwwhhh...

Off to Notre Dame later to join the thousands of other worshippers in midnight mass. Cool! (It was too!)

Oh, sharing this only made me more homesick for Paris.

Au revoir, sniff, sniff...

I'll be posting more as I'm able...

Walking in Paris - a feast for the senses

Where else would you see a metro station with a crown on top? And created by university students too. At Palais Royale. Only in Paris.

Impossible to do if you're on a 3-day junket, but if you're fortunate enough to have a week or more in Paris, take to the streets, using a combination of feet, metro and buses. This is what I like to do.


During my last visit to Paris, I allowed myself a total of 5 weeks to explore as much as I could. I'd always read that Paris was best experienced on foot, and this is so true. Just to wander from neighbourhood to neighbourhood is a feast. Watching Parisians go about their life can be a spectacle in itself. 


I'd heard so much about the Marais, been through it, but never actually wandered there, but it is perfect for the walking tour. With its vintage shops, fellafel stores, cute cafes and bars, this old Jewish quarter attracts people from all walks of life. If you go on Saturday there is a wonderful food market where a lot of locals seem to go for lunch - and why wouldn't they? The produce is amazing. After a look through the market, I found myself a lovely cafe in the square and people watched.

Chocolate anyone?

Parisians certainly have a great passion for food. It's obvious in nearly every window you pass on your walks. The artfully-displayed chocolates, pastries, flowers, frogs legs - it's all there, a feast for the eyes. Even if you never have anything but the Plat du Jour, you will eat heartily and well.

Plat du Jour never looked so good!

One of the delights of Paris to me was that after a long day walking, being overwhelmed by the beautiful sites, sounds and aromas, is to return to my apartment. You don't have to eat our every night, even in Paris! 


On the way back 'home' I might grab a sidewalk crepe of bananas and chocolate to snack on while I shop for ingredients for my own version of a Paris feast. A few bunches of grapes, a slab of duck pate, some rilettes, maybe rabbit and prune, and a fresh hunk of fabulous runny cheese to go with the bottle of Sancerre chilling in the mini bar. Some slices of charcouterie (cold meats) to go on the freshly-baked baguette where I'm met with 'Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!' and I'm set for my French diner in the little apartment, sadly not overlooking the Seine, but pretty cute all the same!


Just as well my preferred mode of transport is walking!

All photos by Geo Covey