Paris v. 2

“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.” – Ernest Hemingway

Paris.  Where to even begin? I think I, like so many before me, have fallen in love with Paris.

I arrived in the early morning on September 16th.  I was staying with some Parisian friends in their very trendy up-and-coming neighborhood in the 9ème arrondissement known, in true bourgeois-bohème hipster fashion, as “SoPi” (South Pigalle), so I headed there first to drop off my luggage and take a very much-needed nap.  With its many hip restaurants, bars, and cafés, SoPi – formerly a rather sketchy red light district – is now often compared to New York’s Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn.