Sapere aude

Sometimes you just find yourself looking at this. Maybe not frequently. But if you do find yourself looking at this, you could stroll downstairs (a lot of stairs, as it turns out) and stand in a room with the bodies of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

View of the Eiffel Tower from the Panthéon of Paris

Then you could stroll along a corridor and find yourself in a room with the corpses of Pierre and Marie Curie. And another containing the bodies of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Emile Zola. And that's just the greatest hits.While there you can also see definitive proof of the earth's rotation.

I'm not saying you should do this or should want to do this, but if you do you should. It is a secular shrine to the Enlightenment, a classical temple of Reason, an inspirational monument to the ideals that led to the founding principles of the United States and the entire modern Western world. Plus, there's a pretty nice view of the Eiffel Tower, so long as you're not particularly afraid of heights. Favorite thing in Paris? It's up there. In more ways than one.

A pilgrimage to Levallois

53, rue Victor Hugo

Finding ourselves in Paris recently, as one only occasionally does, we felt compelled to jump on the number 84 bus and ride it to Levallois to make a little pilgrimage to 53 Rue Victor Hugo to visit Cycles Alex Singer where I had the very great honor of shaking the hand of Olivier Csuka, probably the last of the French Constructeurs. 

Monsieur Csuka was busy being interviewed by what looked like a couple of reporters. Nevertheless he was extremely gracious and spent a few minutes discussing his approach to designing bespoke bikes which basically involves understanding the rider's "practice" and building the bike around the riding style, the size, the age, the strength of the customer. It seems like the kind of typically French process that would take a long, leisurely time. But then who's in a hurry when you're in Paris hanging out in a bike shop with the last of a line of legendary craftsman? 

The showroom floor

He generously let the Managing Partner and I visit the atelier in the back for a few minutes to see where the magic happens. It was satisfyingly messy with all manner of parts hanging from the walls and ceiling and big piles of lovely lugs and whatnot scattered around every flat surface in the place. Oh, man, would I like to spend my days there, surrounded by half-finished projects, scribbled notes, odds and ends of every conceivable description littering every nook and cranny - and trust me, there are a lot of nooks and crannies. 

I didn’t end up buying a €6,000+ work of functional art on this visit. Maybe next year. Not speaking French and not wanting to hang around long enough to get Mr. Csuka’s focused attention, we beat a hasty retreat to Le Royal Pereire where we were just in time to fit in a couple of Aperol Spritzes before the cocktail hour began in earnest. Oh Paris, je t'aime.