Shakespeare and Company was a bookstore opened in Paris by Sylvia Beach in 1919 that became the gathering point for the American expatriate literary world. It operated until 1940 when it closed due to the German occupation and never reopened. But in a sense it never really died. At the end of World War II an American GI named George Whitman decided to stay in Paris and in 1951 opened his own bookstore La Mistral, based on the operational model conceived by Beach. He finally went all the way in 1964, renaming it Shakespeare and Company in honor of the institution that Beach had begun. I picked up a copy of Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch. After I get it read, it will park right next to A Moveable Feast, a posthumously published collection of Hemingway's memoirs from his years in Paris, when he was part of that "lost generation."
The other book is La Rêve (The Dream) by Emile Zola. Since my French isn't quite up to this one yet, it was definitely a purchase to keep an institution alive. The institution in question is the Seine booksellers. This institution goes back to the 16th century, receiving government protection in the mid-17th century. Today there is an eight year waiting list to rent a box fastened to the quay wall that can be opened into an instant bookselling stall. And lest you think this stuff is all junk, know this: the copy of Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) would have set me back a cool $440 in one of these stalls.
And now that I've mentioned Hugo's classic novel, as it happens today was my day for The Climb. Whereas the Arc de Triomphe climb involved 287 steps, Notre Dame has a cool 400. And that's after a one-hour wait in line. But the view? Where else in Paris do you get this?
By the way, this guy is technically not a gargoyle, but a chimera. The gargoyles are used for water drainage. Below, combining the old and the new, are the Eiffel Tower and the box it came in, AKA the Montparnasse Tower. (Thanks to my new BFF Rick Steves, guidebook writer, for the terminology for Montparnasse.)
After climbing the tower of Notre Dame, we felt morally obliged to have lunch at the nearby Quasimodo cafe. I can't say the food was exquisite, but it just had to be done.
Tomorrow we will likely go to Haussman Boulevard to take advantage of the air conditioned department stores. We have only two weeks left before heading home, and we haven't seen everything yet!
