The second that World War II ended Ernest Hemingway (an ultimate pimp) barreled into Paris and headed straight to The Ritz. He entered the bar that would later bear his name and said to the bartender, “I’ll have 50 martinis.” He ended up staying at The Ritz for the following 3 weeks and basking in the glory of a newly free existence.

The tradition of expatriate writers in Paris is something exceptional: George Orwell took a pen-name because he didn’t want to embarrass his well-to-do British family by being such a slovenly thing as a writer … and a starving writer at that. Orwell ended up being forced to pawn his clothes at the Credit Municipale in the Marais to make money. He lived in a boarding house in Montparnasse that he deemed to be “Very dirty, but very home-like.”

There is something to be said for being young, and free, and beholden to no one but yourself, especially when you’re in a foreign land and everything seems more intriguing …

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