“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
(Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast)
A mere reading of the signs of these Parisian cafés and restaurants would convince one of the literary and artistic history of the city. Polidor, La Rotonde, Le Dome, La Closerie de Lilas, Harry's New York Bar--these were associated with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, Sinclair Lewis, Henry James and Humphrey Bogart. Auberge de Venise, known previously as Dingo Bar, was where Hemingway and Fitzgerald met for the first time. Then there is La Coupole, Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots which were hangouts to thinkers like Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
In most cases the prices are exorbitant, for we buy not the coffee but the name. For those who like me prefer to take a cup elsewhere, it suffices to know the spots where many images and ideas were born.