I found a book on Paris cafes at a museum gift shop, so looked up the address of Le Procope, Paris’ oldest cafe (1688). I was at my wit’s end trying to find an address. It’s not in the telephone directory, that book seemingly useless for finding business addresses, or even phone information—there’s no indication of prefixes for calls to cities out of Paris. Tour guide had nothing. But today I found it, 16 rue Vieux Comedies, just down from rue Dauphine in the Latin Quarter, over the Pont Neuf.
After making a couple wrong walking turns, I finally reached the old place. Placed next to the window, I ordered a beer and took in the ornate ancien regime decor. Upstairs are rooms and oil portraits. I really could imagine Ben Franklin eating here, or Voltaire, or the boys of the Revolution. Maybe even Napoleon. Okay, so the beer was nearly 5 e [euros], but the dinner menu looked reasonable enough, so I may be back.
This checks off the third of my visits to famous cafes. Cafe du Croissant, in the old press district, site of Jean Jaurés assassination. Clearly no tourist hangout. Nobody outside of France knows who Jaurés was. Second, Cafe de Flore, at the famed St. Germain de Pres corner. Jammed with tourists who prefer celebrities, even philosophers like Sartre. Procope was hardly full at all. Tourists prefer celebrities to history, even if people like Ben Franklin were celebrities once. Probably in 200 years Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir also will be so antique that their cafe won’t be of much interest, if still serving those expensive beverages.
—March 20, 2005, Paris
OtD 