PARIS 1962

  

Le Falstaff, Rue du Montparnasse, September 20, 1962.

There were so many places one could go in Paris to pass an afternoon. There was Le Peny, a very refined establishment on the right bank near the Louvre. It appeared to have a clientele very similar to the older women I'd seen in the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Women at the Plaza Hotel, New York.

Not far from Le Peny was the very English tea room, Smith's, where I went to buy my first printed piece in France, the Condé Nast magazine, ADAM.

There were the famous cafes in Montparnasse favored by Hemingway and Fitzgerald; Le Dôme Café being one of them.

Across from Le Dôme on the Boulevard Montparnasse, the equally famous Le Select.

There were many less celebrated neighborhood bars in Neuilly. Since all the cafes and bars appeared to always have customers, I wondered if Parisians had jobs.

And around the Latin Quarter near the Sorbonne stood bars where students and locals were always involved in intense discussions.

Every neighborhood had its own selection of cafes and each had its own different but subtle character.

But Saint-Germain-des-Prés always felt the most comfortable and the most picturesque for me. And of course, there was the ever-welcoming Cafe Flore.

After all, the waiters had called me "a pillar of the Flore!"