Inspired by Paris Night Life (Travel & Writing series) by Beth Barany

Last week I shared about Why Paris and how that city is such a rich, evocative place for me.

This week, as the ninth in our Travel & Writing series, I’m focusing on how Paris night life is great place to soak up and participate in a vibrant aspect of the city. Then pour that passion into your writing.

I’ve been running this series for the last few months in conjunction with fellow creativity coach, Paula Chafee Scardamalia. See Paula’s latest posts on travel and inspiration here.

How does night life in a foreign city spice up your writing?

What inspires you about a place’s night life?

I’m curious! Post your comments below.

Here’s some of my favorite places in Paris and what I love about them?

(Photo credit: http://www.aparisguide.com/montmartre/Paris-montmartre1.jpg)

Montmartre

Hike up to this white cathedral, Basilica de Sacre Coeur on the top of Montmartre and get a whole view of the city. On the way there, not only do you get to really exercise your stair muscles, but you also get to ramble through some of the most famous parts of the city. Picasso, Einstein, other famous thinkers and artists all spent time in this part of the city.

The lovely French film, “Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain” had wonderful scenes filmed on and around Montmartre.

(Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9lie)

One of my favorite things to do when I lived in Paris was to sit on the steps of the Basilica de Sacre Coeur and gaze out upon this city I love so much. My heart opened with joy and heartbreak to realize all those lives below me lived, died, loved, cried.

(Photo credit: http://cdn.rsvlts.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Night-view-of-Paris-with-Eiffel-Tower-and-St.-Pierre-de-Montmartre-930×617.jpg)

Maybe because I was sitting at the foot of a cathedral devoted to salving the pain of the world, I was in synch with that too. I felt the compassion of a lovely heart pour through me and toward all of humanity, represented for me by the people of Paris.

Montmartre is wonderful for this wide view, now let’s get nitty gritty.

Irish Pubs

I pub hopped in Paris to the various Irish pubs when I lived there in my early 20s (1990-1992). Sorry, I don’t remember all their names. The ones I went to probably don’t exist anymore.  Here’s a list of recent pubs.

At the time, my favorite drink was scotch. But I can’t drink any more. I still love the spicy heady smell of scotch.

(Photo credit: http://hungrylobbyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/scotch.jpg)

What I loved about going to Irish pubs:

• Meeting new people
• Flirting!
• Drinking with my friends
• Live music
• Multicultural crowd — Anglo-native speakers but also foreigners from all over Europe
• Dancing

Especially in my early 20s, I needed the Irish pubs to both feel somewhat at home and also in a foreign place. The pubs provided a bridge for my young self, a safe place to play.

Photo Credit: c. Beth Barany

The Seine

I realize I have not talked about the River Seine in any of musings about Paris.

Walking along the Seine or across it at night was one of the most romantic things I did in Paris. The water ripples, currents speeding to the sea.

Walk across the Pont des Arts — a walking bridge — and admire the hundreds of locks gripping the bridge.

I write about them in one of my romances, Parisian Amour:

Here’s an excerpt:

Parisian Amour by Beth-Barany, #3 in the Touchstone Series

Dec. 1, Pont des Arts, Paris, France

Sarah Redman strolled across the pedestrian-only bridge, Pont des Arts, in the middle of Paris, wrapped in a raincoat, hat, and scarf. Her breath puffed out white before her. The night winter air chilled her cheeks. The light rain helped her feel refreshed from her long red-eye flight from San Francisco. Seeing the City of Lights grounded her for the big interview tomorrow morning.

This job could be the chance of a lifetime. She was glad for the impulse that had had her looking for it and acting upon the sudden request for a face-to-face interview. The change of pace was just what she needed to shake up the doldrums she’d been experiencing at her job as a project manager at a conservative bank in downtown San Francisco. She wanted some adventure in her life.

A man walked by her, cell phone to his ear, speaking too low for her to hear. His double-breasted navy coat collar was turned up against the cold. With his white scarf tied in an aviator’s knot around his neck, a seaman’s cap low over his forehead, he seemed so French, almost like a character out of one of the Tintin stories. For a second, he glanced up at her and then did a double take. In the streetlight, his hazel eyes sparkled like he knew a naughty secret about her. Her heart sped up and her cheeks heated.

In the next instant, he passed by before he could see her blush. Thank goodness. But it was good to feel the surge of attraction.

And it was good to be doing something other than working and being alone in her apartment with her cactus and her books, or working and going out with the girls to the newest local restaurant. Or working and going on one of her camping trips with the all-women survivalist team. As exciting as those social activities were, they’d become routine.

A car horn blast blared from across the pedestrian bridge on the Left Bank, the opposite direction of her hotel. Just more snarling Parisian traffic, dealing with the rain and the late night. But it was new and different. She smiled. The start of a new chapter in her life, she hoped.

She yawned. But first she needed a decent night’s sleep. She’d slept a little on her flight, but not nearly enough. She turned around before she got to the end of the bridge and headed back toward her cute hotel, tucked behind the church St. Eustache and next to Les Halles, where the famous central market used to be.

Halfway across the bridge, that was when she saw them. The locks, large and small, gym locks and safety locks, old-fashioned and new, decorated the entire iron siding of both sides of the walking bridge. In the lamplight, words were scribbled on the locks in what looked like indelible ink. She paused and knelt to examine one. Scrawled on the small space was a heart with the letters “S & J” inside the heart and the date of November 30, just the day before.

The “S” could have been her. She didn’t have a “J” in her life, but maybe if she’d made room for a relationship, she could have.

Yesterday had been her thirtieth birthday.

Tears welled in her throat unbidden and unwelcome. She was now thirty and had no one to love. Love wasn’t for her and relationships never lasted.

She stood and rubbed the pebble in her coat pocket. The small stone kept her grounded and reminded her of the Tehachapi Canyon where she liked to camp.

A flash of a dream came to her, one she’d had in the days leading up to her trip to Paris. In her dream, someone or something was weeping in a huge cavern, its cries echoing off the high ceiling and far walls—a creature crying with all its heart, as if it were tragically broken.

Sarah’s heart ached for the creature.

Then a gust of cold air brought a sheet of rain into her face, snapping her out of the dream.

She hurried across the bridge back to her hotel.

Dreams were just dreams.

Dragons just existed in fairy tales.

She had her own adventure to create.

 

More about Parisian Amour here.