Tag Archives: France

Paris: Café de Flore

cafe de flore

I would not be unduly surprised, if I discovered, on some future trip to Paris, that the legendary Café de Flore had been frozen in aspic, to preserve it for eternity, and declared a national monument by the French government. It is after all one of the grandes dames of Parisian cafés which opened its doors to the coffee imbibing public way back in 1887. And, of course, it’s a place where the rooms echo with the ghostly voices of some of the literary and philosophical greats (including Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Ernest Hemingway …) who ate, drank, and wrote there in earlier epochs.

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Filed under France, Paris, Restaurants/Cafés

Breakfast in Paris: Le Café Marly

paris cafe marly

I was in Paris for a few days towards the end of November. The night before I went, as per, I waged a duel between the desire to sleep and the worry that if I did, I might not hear my alarm pinging, in the small hours, and as a result miss my flight. While I was tossing and turning I was running through a mental list of things to do and places to see when I got to Paris: wondering which museum to visit and musing over the more mundane question of where to have breakfast.

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Filed under Paris, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel

Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val

Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val

The weather was glorious in south-west France during my short sojourn there. It was lovely to feast my eyes on azure blue skies part-filled with flossy white clouds, to feel the warmth of the sun on my back and to experience a succession of rain-free days. I was staying in Lisle-sur-Tarn a pretty medieval bastide (fortified) town between Toulouse and Albi. If the name Lisle-sur-Tarn sounds familiar perhaps you read Tracy Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue which was set in the town.

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Filed under Food/Wine, France, Travel