For me, all this carefree Art Nouveau ebullience triggered a moment of understanding. This was a side to Paris that I had often read about but never properly experienced. The Bouillon was a survival from the Belle Époque, when Paris became both decadent and beautiful; when the Metro, adorned by its Art Nouveau station signs, was opened; when the building of the grand hotels, the Eiffel Tower, the Opéra Garnier, the Gare d'Orsay, the Grand Palais, changed the character of the city. It was the hedonistic backdrop to La Vie Parisienne and the Folies Bergère. And although I had visited the city many times, I had never properly got to know it.
I first went to Paris in the late Seventies, when I was 17, and for me the city was then all about progress and modernity. While London was a grimy, dated metropolis with buses from the Forties and Tube trains out of a pre-war era, here was a dynamic capital looking to the future in a positive and exciting way.
Источник: Telegraph.co.uk
