PARISIAN SNAPSHOTS // NIGHTLIFE IN THE CITY OF LOVE

Having spent our first few days in Paris crammed into art galleries and museums, we decided to head out after dinner for a few drinks.

A tradition that dates back centuries, writers, poets, painters and patrons gather at the cafes that dot the sidewalks of Paris. The cafe chairs face outward offering visitors a view of the hustle and bustle, while waiters and waitresses move quickly from table to table taking orders, often assuming one knows what they want without ever seeing a menu.

Conversations are quiet and common, laptops and iPhone's seemingly irrelevant and often unseen. You move from cafe to cafe experimenting with house cocktails and local wines. The patrons seem pleasant, and while they are not overtly gregarious, they are in no way hostile or unkind. So as we mapped out our Parisian cafe quest I found myself eager to explore the city long into the hours after the sun went down, curious if I would have time to visit all of the cafes on our list, let alone get any sleep... [read more]

On this particular night we opted for the Metro, leaving our rented Renault Espace in the underground parking garage. Paris' subway is fast and efficent, with helpful information desks and easy to read maps. From our hotel in the Opera quarter it was a quick ride to Harry's New York Bar.

First opened in 1911, Harry's New York bar was once the preferred watering hole of Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, Jack Dempsey, Primo Carnera, Rita Hayworth and Humphrey Bogart.

The aesthetic remains much as it did when Hemingway would have visited in the early 1920's. A long glass mirror stretches the length of the interior, while bartenders in white 'American barkeep jackets' mind the bar and serve cocktails to eager patrons. There is no menu and when we asked the bartender to make us a Monkey Gland he looked rather puzzled and was forced to refer to 'Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails.'

1/2 Gin, 1/2 Orange Juice, a dash of Grenadine, a dash of Absinthe, shake well and strained into a cocktail glass. The Monkey Gland was developed by Harry McElhone, proprietor of Harry's New York Bar, and is a potent mix of bitter and sweet.

We finished the evening at yet another Parisian literary haunt, the Cafe de Flore. Frequented by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Cafe de Flore sits on the corner of Boulevard Saint Germain and Rue St. Benoit, and is a stones throw from Le Deux Magots, another favored hangout of the post war Parisian literary crowd.

Stay tuned for more from our trip to France and the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans

Photo/Editorial: Justin Coffey