Everytime I’m in Paris I take a different walking tour with Localers to rediscover the city and end up seeing the places I’ve already been to in a different way. Before telling you about my latest experience last February I want to quickly introduce Localers to new readers and followers.

Localers is a Parisian agency specialized in walking tours that aim to provide customers with a unique and magical Paris experience. They have carefully selected their charismatic guides according to their expertise and each tour is studied and built by them. So if you take a culinary tour it will be guided by a specialist, and so on. Only small groups are allowed and it builts a bond between the guide and customers, to the point that we seem to be a group of friends wandering around Paris – which makes the experience even more genuine.

30 Jours à Paris readers have a 10% off on booking any of Localers’s tours, just use the promocode 30JOURSAPARIS

This February I took the “Literature Tour – Heminway & friends”. I love books and am fascinated by History. Is there a better place to combine these two passions than Paris??

I was anxious to meet the specialist who would guide me through Saint Germain for the next 3 hours and would retrace the steps of the most famous writers and poets who immortalized Paris in their works. At the meeting point I met the other customers, 3 Americans women, and the Localers guide Alberto, an Italian guy graduated in History and Politics in Milan who has lived in several countries in the last 7 years until choosing Paris to settle down. Alberto Rigettini is a poet, playwright, screenwriter and host of “Spoken Word Paris”. Among other literary awards, he is one of the writers included in the book “Strangers in Paris”, an anthology of short stories by Anglophone writers in Paris.

To go back in time and follow in the footsteps of legendary writers such as Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, we would be discovering Saint Germain, in the Rive Gauche, but tour began on the other side of the river at the Palais Royal, with highlights of historical events from the end of the 19th century which included brothels in the royal property administered by the Duke d’Orléans, Louis-Philippe.

Alberto shared with us stories of a not so glorious time, but important for the change of course for the country. From there we walked to the Rive Gauche and discovered the hotels where the writers settled. The conversation naturally flowed and Alberto ended up including some other points that were not foreseen in the original script.

 

We had a delicious coffee break at a bistro. We could have chosen between one of the writers’ favorite bistros, but since we all have already been to Les Deux Magots and Café de Flore we took Alberto’s suggestion and went to a trendy place related to the world of books.

Our tour ended in the Latin Quarter, in front of one of the most famous bookstores in the city, not by chance. In spite of its recent fame acquired mainly because of the movies shot there, the place keeps many stories since its creation in another address that no longer exists.

Now I will leave you curious for more details, but I hope you take the tour, (re) discover Saint Germain and fall in love with this city. Remember that the 30 Jours à Paris reader has a 10% discount when booking any tour through the Localers website using the promocode 30JOURSAPARIS. Click and book your literary tour!

Bisous,

Carol