Paris When It Sizzled: Montparnasse and the Café Years
Location: Left Bank-Montparnasse
Tour Duration: 2 1/2 Hours
Host: John Baxter
Price: 175 Euros*







"These are all personalized tours, tailored to suit your own itineraries, times, etc. They can be for just one person, a couple, a small family group or a group of friends.Prices may be adjusted depending on the number taking part in the tour."

* Paris walking tours can be found for as little as 20 euros in groups BUT a tour with John Baxter is like walking with Orson Welles without the beard–a larger than life, theatrical experience. When you stop at 27 rue de Fleuris you won’t just be told that Gertrude and Alice lived there but what Alice cooked, Hemingway observed, Joyce drank, Picasso painted and who flirted with whom at their Sunday salons. And an opium pipe spied in a shop window might prompt ten minutes on Jean Cocteau and opium usage during Les Années Folles

My girlfriend Ceciley and I had already been in Paris for 2 days when we met John Baxter for his Paris When It Sizzled tour.  After 2 1/2 hours with John, the city was transformed for us forever.  What he gives is more than the walking tour where someone points, 'And that happened there.'  What John gives is the city itself.  The culture, history, and beauty that breathes around every corner.  He is a true storyteller and a man of letters, art, and yes... wine.  Now, when I think about my first trip to Paris, I don't think about the Eifel Tower or the Louvre.  I think about the day with John Baxter.  To me, he is Paris."
 - Stephen Chbosky

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Commencing at La Coupole, largest and most charismatic of Montparnasse’s great literary and artistic cafes, haunt of photographer and painter MAN RAY, and numerous artists, including SALVADOR DALI,  we visit the Select, the Dome and Rotonde Cafes, the controversial statue of Balzac by AUGUSTE RODIN and the gallery where MAN RAY and MARCEL DUCHAMP showed some of the first art work of Surrealism.

We re-cross the Boulevard to the Dingo Bar, where ERNEST HEMINGWAY and F. SCOTT FITZGERALD first met, the residence of Surrealist ANDRE BRETON, the studios of painters MODIGLIANI and FOUJITA, and the site of the famous art deco brothel LE SPHINX, favourite of HENRY MILLER, who lived nearby, as did American novelists THOMAS WOLFE and NATHANAEL WEST.

In Montparnasse Cemetery we visit the graves of SAMUEL BECKETT, JEAN PAUL SARTRE and SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, then the former residence of Surrealist film-maker LUIS BUNUEL, the studio MAN RAY shared with LEE MILLER, the JOCKEY BAR, favourite hangout of Ray and his mistress and model Alice Prin, aka KIKI OF MONTPARNASSE, the former homes of poet EZRA POUND and ERNEST and HADLEY HEMINGWAY, and the Negre de Toulouse cafe, ending at the Closerie des Lilas, his favourite café and bar, on the terrace of which he wrote and set much of THE SUN ALSO RISES

About Your Guide
Author John Baxter has lived in the heart of literary Paris for fifteen years, and knows intimately every winding street, corner cafe and hidden courtyard. His knowledge of les années folles - the Crazy Years - becomes yours as he guides you around the haunts of these literary giants, recounting their stories with the same vivid style that illuminates his biographies of Woody Allen, Luis Bunuel and Stanley Kubrick, and his best-selling memoir We'll Always Have Paris. If you never shared an aperitif at La Coupole with Hemingway, borrowed a book from Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company or strolled through the Luxembourg Gardens with William Faulkner, this is the next best thing.

Testimonial
"We perused information about tour after tour on our first visit to Paris, but I really doubt few, if any, offer the insight and entertainment of John Baxter's "Paris When It Sizzled."

Joe and Cathy Fama