More about my Paris trip--including the bike I rented and one I saw on the street--are on the way, I promise. I'm still under the weather, just as the new semester is beginning.
In the meantime, I'll show you a treat that awaited me during one of my rides in the City of Light.
You were expecting a crepe or some such thing? Actually, I did enjoy one with creme de marron (chestnut paste--much better than Nutella!) at a nearby stand. The fellow who made it was, in his own right, an artist. So was the person (or were the persons) responsible for that riot of light and color.
No, a rabid painter or eccentric designer didn't storm his or her way into the abbey of Saint Germain des Pres. The artist or artists in question did their work long ago and, perhaps unwittingly, made another kind of art--something we might call an "installation"--possible.
Ironically, the abbey stands across the eponymous Place from a cafe--Deux Magots--renowned as a haven for artists, writers, composers and other creative people during the first half of the twentieth century. Most who make the pilgrimage to the cafe and the surrounding area for its literary and artistic heritage do not, I suspect, visit the church for which the Place is named. Likewise, I don't think most who enter the church are much interested in the walking in the footsteps or imbibing the nectar that nourished the talents of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Hemingway and their contemporaries.
