Atlantica - 01.11.2002, Side 27

With art on the mind, don’t be surprised if when nursing a glass of
red wine in a Parisian café, smack dab in the middle of the arty St.
Germain district, you run into a student devouring a book of poetry.
Currently I’m talking to Francesca, an attractive Londoner reading
from a book containing the “100 best love poems“. Having studied
poetry, I check out the table of contents.
Francesca teaches English in Paris. She enjoys living here because
the city is “artistic and romantic, not hard like London”, she tells
me, as I flip past Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings and land on ‘The Red
Wheelbarrow’ by William Carlos Williams: “so much depends /
upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the
white / chickens.”
I couldn’t agree more.
FRENCH KISS
To write that Paris is a romantic city would be to commit the ulti-
mate sin of cliché. However, strolling through Paris at night is
enough to make even the most ardent bachelor long for that special
someone.
Take the Pont des Arts (Bridge of the Arts), a small wooden bridge
that fills with hand-holding couples – both locals and tourists – star-
ing out over the Seine river while the sun slowly drops out of sight
from the Paris skyline. But any bridge will do, and most fill with star-
ry-eyed lovers drawn to the river’s edge as day sheds its skin into
night and on go the lights of Paris.
Is there a more idyllic snapshot to take home than the Eiffel Tower
glowing?
Step off whatever bridge you’re on and walk down to Pont-Neuf.
Follow the stairs down to a small promenade on Ile de la Cité that
narrows as it juts to a point. If this isn’t the most romantic (oops)
spot in Paris. Tonight, a Parisian couple in their mid 40s has perched
here to watch Paris by night.
“Paris is beautiful everywhere – on top of the Eiffel Tower, Notre-
Dame, La Marais – but especially here, Pont-Neuf,” says the gentle-
man, who shies away from revealing his name.
“Watch. The lights are about to turn on,” says the woman who
laughs deviously when I ask her name. “We’re not supposed to be
here, so I can’t tell you,” she says.
I do learn that the mysterious couple are co-workers in a telecom-
munications firm. Tonight they’ve stolen away from their loved ones
back at home to enjoy an illicit moment of romance here at Pont-
Neuf.
As the lights flicker, rippling through the soft current of the Seine
river, the couple enjoys a lengthy kiss then blissfully strolls off into
the Paris evening.
Edward Weinman is a staff writer.
Icelandair flies twice a week between Charles de Gaulle International Airport
and Keflavík International Airport where passengers can connect to five North
American gateways.
A T L A N T I C A 25
TOP: WHAT’S THE NAME OF THAT DARN TOWER I SEE EVERYWHERE?
ABOVE: TOURISTS CRANING THEIR NECKS AT YET ANOTHER FAMOUS
MONUMENT.
PARIS
018-025 ATL 602 París 20.10.2002 11:04 Page 25