Parisian cafes, brasseries and bistros, clockwise from top left; Robert Wagt, Miles Hyman, Kiraz, Rene Gruau, a Parisian terrace by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn for Vogue, famous Parisian cafe "les deux magots" by Jean-Jacques Sempe and a Parisian brasserie terrace as seen by Voutch.
To some people Paris may seem as a clutter of Bistros, Bars, Cafes and Brasseries and sure enough my earliest memories as an 18 year old thumbing my way into France are of a mixture of Gauloises cigarette smells and cafe au lait, of waiters shouting "un jambon beurre, un!" and of those famous Turkish toilets, the French sanitary equivalent of a car driving of a cliff.
A lot of water has passed under the bridges of the Seine since then, gone are the Gauloises and the Gitanes and with them the Turkish toilets, the coffee's still not strong enough to defend itself and the waiters, well.... after all it's Paris!
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