Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [252]
Bookstores
If you like visiting local bookstores when you travel as much as I do, I feel certain you’ll love these favorites of mine:
Librairie Florence Loewy (9 rue de Thorigny, 3ème / florence loewy.com). A truly unique store/gallery with books by artists.
Galignani (224 rue de Rivoli, 1er/galignani.com). The first English-language bookstore on the Continent.
La Hune (170 boulevard Saint-Germain, 6ème). For an impressive selection of art, design, film, poetry, literature, and philosophy titles.
La Librairie des Gourmets (98 rue Monge, 5ème). Wonderful store for cookbooks and culinary books of all types, as well as a great selection of posters, cards, and culinary maps of France. The shop was chosen to run the Paris chapter of Slow Food.
Librairie Gourmande (92 rue Montmartre, 2ème/librairiegour mande.fr). Also a wonderful, two-story culinary bookstore near the site of the original Les Halles food market, appropriately.
Paris et Son Patrimoine (25 rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, 4ème). Books (nearly all in French) about Paris neighborhoods, streets, monuments, architecture, music, and theater.
Taschen (2 rue de Buci, 6ème). Hardcover illustrated books on art, fashion, travel, design, film, etc.
Village Voice (6 rue Princesse, 6ème / villagevoicebookshop.com). An all-around terrific selection of books in English and a stellar lineup of author appearances and special events (plus a very thorough list of recommended books about Paris on its Web site).
Les Bouquinistes
I think the first time I came across the word bouquiniste was when reading Hemingway, and ever since then I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for these secondhand booksellers (sellers of bouquins) who set up shop along the banks of the Seine. Rhonda Carrier relates in In Love in France that the bouquinistes originated in the sixteenth century, a time when some of Paris’s bridges had shops and stalls along their lengths. The booksellers sold their wares from wheelbarrows until someone came up with the idea to attach trays to the sides of the bridges with leather straps. This continued until the late nineteenth century, when the bouquinistes were permitted to fasten their boxes to the quaysides on a permanent basis. Apparently there is an eight-year wait for a bouquiniste spot! Over the years I’ve bought quite a few items from bouquinistes—old stamps, postcards, paperback books, prints—though admittedly the value lay in actually purchasing them from a bouquiniste rather than owning them. I do very much love the two colored etchings I bought and had framed, and they are joined by other etchings I’ve collected on one wall in my living room.
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Canal Saint-Martin
The Canal Saint-Martin, in the tenth arrondissement, is one of my favorite places in Paris, especially on Sunday, when many shops are closed and museums can be crowded. The canal’s construction was ordered by Napoléon in 1802 to supply Paris with a source of drinking water, to help eradicate diseases like cholera and dysentery, and to provide a shorter river traffic route through Paris rather than around it. Gaspard de Chabrol, then prefect of Paris, proposed a canal that would be four and a half kilometers long and would connect the river Ourcq to the Seine, and the project was funded by a new tax on wine. The Canal Saint-Martin was completed in 1825; in Paris it is bordered by the Quai de Valmy on one side and the Quai de Jemmapes on the other. The Hôtel du Nord—the very same from Marcel Carné’s 1938 film—is at 102 Quai de Jemmapes and is now a bar and restaurant (with a cool Web site, hoteldunord.org). Readers may remember that in the movie the character Arletty utters a classic line implying that “atmosphere” is overrated; appropriately, there is a nearby bistro, L’Atmosph