Round the World with Us

See inside Shakespeare & Co, one of Paris’ most famous shops.  If you love books, is a great place to explore.  We browsed through the books, found a great one on French history for only 3 Euro and ate at the cafe next store with a view of Notre Dame.

Shakespeare & Co is a bookstore located in the across the Seine from Notre Dame in Paris’s Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company offers and interesting selection of books in English and houses young writers, known as tumbleweeds, who earn their keep by working in the shop for a couple of hours each day. The current store is named after and in honour of an earlier store which closed during World War II.

From Wikipedia: The original bookstore’s proprietor was Sylvia Beach, an American from New Jersey. She opened the store in 1919 on 8 rue Dupuytren. The store also functioned as a lending library as well as a bookstore. In May 1921, Beach moved the store to a larger location at 12 rue de l’Odéon, where it remained until 1941. During this era, the store was considered the center of Anglo-American literary culture and modernism in Paris. Writers and artists of the “Lost Generation,” such as Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald,Gertrude Stein, George Antheil, Man Ray and James Joyce spent a great deal of time at Shakespeare and Company.

To learn more: http://shakespeareandcompany.com/

We loved browsing through the books and soaking up the culture of the place.  We found a great book on French history – written in a very entertaining style – which Alex will write a post on soon. The book was a bargain at 3 Euro – or about $4.

We also ate at a cafe right next store – Alex got a banana and Nutella crepe with whipped cream, which came with a sparkler – yumm!!  We had a great view of Notre Dame from across the Seine.