Bonjour, and Happy French Fri-Day! 🍟

Paris has given us a surprising pocket-sized return of summer weather that has coaxed Parisians back out to the café terraces, perhaps for one last taste of warmth before fall truly settles in. After days of cooler temperatures that had us reaching for jackets, Thursday and Friday brought back that golden September light.

I'm writing this Friday morning from the terrace at Le Bullier, sitting in a t-shirt and savoring a noisette while watching the city wake up around me. I'm positioned directly across the street from La Closerie des Lilas, where I needed to snap a photo for this week's Hemingway feature below.

There's something magical about these surprise pockets of summer weather in late September. The terraces that had been slowly emptying earlier this week are suddenly full again, with Parisians seeming to exhale, rekindling their love for the city. The light hits the buildings differently at this time of year, much softer, warmer, and you can feel everyone savoring these moments before the real chill arrives.

🎉 Multi-Day Experience Update 🙏

The response to last week's multi-day experience waitlist was absolutely incredible! I'm genuinely impressed by how many of you clicked to express interest in our 2026 inclusive multi-day Paris tours. Thank you!

If you missed last week's newsletter but want to be added to the waitlist to learn more about these upcoming multi-day experiences, just click HERE, and I'll make sure you're in the loop when we start sharing more details.

➡️ Is Paris Ready for Real Southern Cooking?: The New York Times reports that chef Mashama Bailey is opening L’Arrêt by The Grey on Paris’s Left Bank, bringing her Southern cooking to the city and asking whether Paris is ready for it.

➡️ These Independent and French-Owned Hotels Are Where Paris Insiders Check In: AFAR rounds up the best independent and French-owned hotels in Paris, highlighting boutique stays and insider-favorite maisons across the city.

➡️ The Last Critic In Paris: Vittles publishes an essay arguing that French restaurant criticism in Paris has withered, profiling court reporter–turned–critic Stéphane Durand-Souffland as a rare, uncompromising voice.

➡️ Heritage Days in France: ideas for visits this weekend plus photos: The Connexion previews European Heritage Days in France with free-entry ideas across regions, dates, and links to the official event map, plus photo highlights.

The Seine is the lifeblood of Paris, and this extensive walk along its banks is hands down my favorite route in the city.

Perfect for first-time visitors who want to understand Paris's soul, and equally rewarding for regular visitors ready to dive deeper into 2,000 years of hidden history.

This is the ultimate Paris walk, and I've just turned it into a digital guide you can use anytime.

But it’s so much more than a walking guide…

It also has café recommendations, transportation tips, and an interactive map to guide you from location to location. Beta launch: $9 instead of $39.

Every day, hundreds of tourists queue outside Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore, smartphones ready, eager to sit where Hemingway supposedly penned his masterpieces. The irony is delicious: these legendary Saint-Germain cafés that now profit handsomely from their Hemingway association were often the very places the young, broke writer couldn't afford to enter.

In the winter of 1921, a young Ernest Hemingway would often find himself standing outside Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain, his breath visible in the crisp Parisian air as he peered through the foggy windows. Inside, the intellectual elite huddled around marble-topped tables, cigarette smoke swirling above animated conversations about art, literature, and politics.

Though just steps away physically, the café might as well have been miles beyond his reach. The few francs in his pocket (barely enough for a simple meal in his Montparnasse apartment) couldn't stretch to cover the café's prices.

Where He Actually Worked

While tourists snap selfies at overpriced tables in Saint-Germain, the real story unfolds in Montparnasse, at a café called La Closerie des Lilas, on the corner of Boulevard Montparnasse and the Avenue de l'Observatoire. Hemingway listed this café as one of his favorite places in Paris in his memoirs.

This historical cafe/restaurant/brasserie is where Hemingway first read The Great Gatsby with his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald and where he wrote most of The Sun Also Rises. A placard marks his favorite seat at the bar, and one can even order a "Filet Hemingway".

But why La Closerie des Lilas over the more famous Montparnasse haunts like La Rotonde and Le Dôme? Hemingway preferred the Closerie des Lilas over the others because the popular Montparnasse cafés were places where people went to see and be seen. In contrast, at the Closerie, he was able to focus on his writing.

The Writing Room Above the Sawmill

The complete picture of Hemingway's writing life reveals an even more humble truth. While living at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Hemingway also rented a second room, just around the corner, at 39 rue Descartes, which served as his office and writing space. This sparse room above a sawmill (with no running water and minimal heat) was where much of his early work took shape.

The Economics of Inspiration

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway describes his financial constraints: "You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows." He writes of strategically timing his walks to avoid passing restaurants during mealtimes and budgeting for café visits, typically to more affordable establishments like the Closerie des Lilas, where staff would let him linger over a single café crème while he wrote (or, when he could afford it, a Death in the Afternoon, which was said to be his favorite drink for some time: one part champagne and one part absinthe. 😳 But that's a story for another time).

The young Hemingway's poverty shaped not just where he could write, but how he wrote. His famous prose style was born partly from necessity: when you can afford only one café crème for an entire afternoon of writing, every word must earn its keep.

The Tourist Paradox

Today, tourists queue outside Café de Flore, smartphones ready to capture the perfect Parisian moment, eager to sit where Hemingway supposedly wrote.

Meanwhile, La Closerie des Lilas (where he actually spent countless hours crafting the sentences that would change American literature) remains relatively unknown to the Instagram crowd. You can still sit at the bar where his nameplate marks his favorite spot, order a café crème, and write. The waiters won't hurry you along, maintaining that old Parisian tradition that once sustained a broke young American who was busy inventing a new way to tell stories.

La Closerie des Lilas deserves a spot on your Paris itinerary if you want to walk where literary history was actually made.

Few songs capture the magic of early morning Paris quite like Jacques Dutronc's "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille." Released in 1968, this track paints a vivid picture of the city waking up at dawn. Street sweepers, early commuters, quiet moments before the day begins. It's a love letter to the Paris that belongs to early risers and insomniacs, before the tourists take over.

Want to experience Paris beyond the guidebooks? Join me for private walking and/or biking tours for fascinating stories, hidden corners, and local insights that make this city extraordinary. From the bohemian streets of Montmartre to the medieval layers of the Marais, each tour combines history, recommendations, and the kind of authentic discoveries that turn a visit into a love affair with Paris.