In The Spring - Networking Magazine

Paris
In The Spring
STORY BY DENIS SHEAHAN
Photos by Christine Conniff Sheahan and Denis Sheahan
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28 NETWORKING June/July 2014
The Left Bank of Paris is like no other place on the planet.
In the springtime when we visited Paris for a week, it was a
return to another time in our lives. We were there on our
honeymoon years ago, and twice more before this latest
visit in early May. I had lived in Paris and attended the Sorbonne in l958-59 and I had a fairly good knowledge of the
city. We had a hotel reservation on the Left Bank at Best
Western Trianon Rive Gauche on Rue Vaugirard just off
Boulevard St. Michel. We had arrived via Air France at De
Gaulle Airport. Both the hotel and the flight were arranged
by the very talented travel expert Gloria Bohan of Omega
World Travel in Fairfax, Virgina.
This time, rather than take in the tourist attractions, which we had visited before, we decided to visit cafes for lunch and dinner and just hang
out all over the Left Bank. Together our memories include pushing Christine around in a wheel chair. She had broken her leg on the first day of the
skiing trip on the first day of our 1966 honeymoon in Austria.
But this time we were able to walk the Left Bank. What a pleasure to go
up and down St. Germain des Pres and stop at Deux Magots, the ultimate
restaurant and outdoor cafe which is in the very heart of the Left Bank.
The outdoor cafes are jammed at the cocktail and dinner hours with the
young and old of every conceivable nationality.
One of the great pleasures of Paris is a tour on the Bateau Mouche
(tourist boat) that goes up and down the River Seine. It passes the Eiffel
Tower and under the bridges on the Seine, including Le Pont des Arts, Le
Pont Neuf and the Pont St. Louis. The views along the Seine are spectacular including those of Parisiens relaxing on the banks of the river.
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NETWORKING June/July 2014 29
The Sheahans in front of their hotel, Best Western Trianon
Rive Gauche, Continued on next page
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30 NETWORKING June/July 2014
Continued from
preceding page
Our hotel in Paris,
Best Western Trianon Rive Gauche, is
a 100 year old hotel
centrally located off
Boulevard Saint
Michel near the Sorbonne, the famous
old school where I
studied French a half
century ago.
In Paris it rains
with the drop of a
hat in the spring,
and thus you wear a
raincoat as a precaution. When the sunshine returns it
becomes a glorious
day. If the rain came
while we were walking we stepped inside a cafe and had
coffee.
The Air France jet
to and from Paris was very comfortable since we were
upfront in the business class. Each passenger had his
own television set which had scores of choices including films. One of those films was Casablanca starring
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman which is one
of our all-time favorite films. On the return trip we
played it which showed Bogart sending Ingrid off to
Lisbon with his unforgettable line, “We’ll always have
Paris.” It was as if the line was written for us. ■
...We played it which showed
Bogart sending Ingrid off
to Lisbon with his unforgettable
line, “We’ll always have
Paris.” It was as if the line
was written for us.