SWT Tours: Travel-By-The-Book Proust Literary Tour

PROUST IN PARIS 2012
May 21-27, 2012

Following is our May 2010 itinerary with 2012 dates.
The basic itinerary remains more or less the same.
Exhibits marked with a * will be replaced
with another activity.

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Monday May 21,2012
Arrive in Paris today or before this date. Check into our hotel, our favorite 3* boutique hotel in our favorite arrondissement, the 6th.

1:45pm
Meet in lobby to board our private mini-van for our approximately 4-hour tour around Paris to Proust sites. Our first stop will be Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Proust is buried. If there is a place to buy flowers at the cemetery, we will buy a bouquet to place on Proust’s simple grave. Other notables buried here: Oscar Wilde, Balzac, Apollinaire, Maria Callas.

Next we will drive past several Proust sites, along the Seine through the old wine warehouse district in the 20th, along the Left Bank, past the Bibliothèque Mazarine where Proust worked for only a few days, past the magnificent L’Opera currently under renovation as we discuss Proust’s connection to theatre and the opera.
102, Boulevard Hausmann, one of Proust’s apartments. The building is now owned by a bank, which no longer allows visitors. 9, Boulevard Malsherbes, the Proust family apartment during his childhood in an affluent part of the city, then a stop at Place Madeleine’s pissoir, a little-known Art Nouveau “facility” built in 1905 (we won’t vouch for Proust’s having used it, but is an interesting example of period design). We like it. Be sure to pay the price of admission to a stall if you need one, probably one euro, or you will be loudly accused (J’accuse!) as I was (falsely, I must say). Boulevard des Italiens where Swann searched for Odette, and past the former site of the Jockey Club. Stop at Allée Marcel Proust: notable as the spot where the narrator played with Gilberte and where his grandmother took ill. Finally up the Champs Elysées to the Ètoile onto rue La Pérouse where Laure Heyman (a mistress of Proust’s uncle Louis Weil and one of the models for Odette) lived.

Back to the hotel around 6 pm
6:45 pm Meet in hotel lobby for short walk for group dinner (included in tour price).
L’Epi Dupin, 11, rue Dupin

Tues. May 22, 2012
9:45 am Meet in hotel lobby to walk to the * Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits, which is showing a temporary exhibition of 160, some never seen by the public, Proust letters and documents.
Noon. Lunch at Lapérouse, the elegant restaurant facing the Seine, open since the 1870’s. It is famous for its 14 private dining rooms, each with a lock, where “gentlemen entertained ladies who were not their wives.” I have often dined at Laperouse, and lately it has become the darling of Paris’ best food bloogers. Our lunch here on our last Proust tour was excellent. Lunch included in tour price, the second of your 4 meals that are included. Then we will taxi to Musée Jacquemart-Andre, a beautifully preserved 19th century mansion that gives us a vivid picture of what a house that Proust might have visited looked like. Excellent audio tour. Nice tea room if you’d like to stop for tea or coffee. Finally, we will walk through
Parc Monceau, the park that Proust frequented as a child.

Back to hotel. Dinner on your own…you may want something simple after our big lunch. Dinner on your own means it is not included in tour price. Harold and/or I or both of us will always be available to suggest a place to eat and accompany you if you wish. This is an evening where you might want to go to a concert or opera. More information about what’s on that week will follow in a day or so. No one has expressed interest in going to a concert or opera.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012
9am Leave on our private mini-van for Illiers-Combray, about an hour and a half from Paris. Visit “Tante Leonie’s house”, the Church Saint-Jacques, walk the Méséglise or Guermantes Way. Madeleines (of course) and a reading and discussion of the famous episode. Lunch at Restaurant Les Aubepines, a simple 5 room hotel and restaurant. Lunch is not included, instead last day lunch is. There is a 13.50 euro menu. Program : 11am…One hour tour of the town in English. 12:30 Lunch
2:30 Tour of “Tante Leonie’s house” given only in French. Someone will translate.

Thursday May 24, 2012
9:30 am Taxi to the Musée Carnavalet, the museum of Paris life and history, where we will meet our guide, Pam Grant, an American who is one of our favorite guides
anywhere. Pam will have just returned from two weeks at the Cannes Film Festival. She also does English subtitles for French movies and has worked on many famous
films. Marcel Proust’s furniture is the main attraction for us. His cork-lined room combines furnishings from his last three apartments. The principal item is the brass bed in which he slept as a child and wrote much of In Search of Lost Time. We will also visit the “room” of one of Proust’s best friends, the poet Anna de Noailles, and the portrait of the priest who read him his last rites. Also at the Carnavalet, the Madame de Sevigné connection and portraits of famous writers. This is the best place in Paris to buy Proust souvenirs. Lunch at the funky L’As du Fallafel on rue des Rosiers, where, Time Out declares, the fallafel is “out of this world”, and it is. Don’t worry, if you don’t like fallafel there are salads and other things.

After lunch, we will have a walking tour of the Marais focusing on its Jewish history and the Dreyfus Affair, and its revelance to the Proust novel.

5pm Optional High Tea at the Ritz (about 30 euros )(what better way to follow fallafel?).

Friday May 25, 2012
8am Departure for Cabourg (Balbec) in Normandy. It’s a three to four hour journey by bus depending on the traffic. On arrival we will tour some of the many Proust sites that include: In Dives-sur-Mer (Balbec Plage)…the tiny train station, the church, the ancient marketplace. To Trouville…a marked Proust route to see mansions associated with Proust. Lunch at the Grand Hotel (included in tour price) See the room designated as Proust’s bedroom. Readings on the Beach (weather permitting). A walk through the town (time permitting).

Saturday, May 26, 2012
This is a busy day that includes 3 museums and our farewell lunch in a beautiful part of the Bois. The reason for clustering of two of the museums is that a two day Museum Pass has to be used on consecutive days. We don’t have two consecutive days that work and we don’t want to wait on lines. This means if you have time on Sunday, before your departure, you can use your Museum Pass.
9:00 am Walk or taxi to the Louvre…
Proust mentions over 100 artists in his novel, Carpaccio 11 times, Titian 14 times.
“Proust wrote primarily about paintings he knew from direct experience, works thoughtfully studied for untold hours in the museums, galleries and private collections of 19th century Paris” (Eric Karpeles, Paintings in Proust).

It is fascinating to see a painting, then read Proust’s actual words relating the painting to his story. There are about 30 paintings in the Louvre mentioned in Proust’s novel. We will explore many of them.

Then a taxi ride to the Musee d’Orsay…Proust’s portrait by Jacques-Emile Blanche. Proust owned this portrait until he died in 1922. Visit the Manet paintings there, one with Baudelaire, Proust’s favorite poet, and the portrait of Robert de Montesquiou, reputed to be the inspiration for Charlus.

Lunch at Chalet-des-Iles on an island in the Lac Inferieur in the Bois de Boulogne. It is reached by a small ferry from our taxi drop-off point. The painter Madeleine Lemaire (see below) frequented the restaurant and Proust used it for the narrator’s hoped-for assignation with Mademoiselle Stermaria. Lunch is included in the tour price.

After lunch, the Musée Marmottan, the museum devoted to Monet’s paintings where we will see the temporary exhibition Femmes Peintres et salons au temps de Proust (Woman Painters and Salons in the Time of Proust). A major part of this exhibition is paintings by Madeleine Lemaire, who provided the illustrations for Proust’s first book, Les Plaisirs et les jours. Reading of a new translation of Proust’s poem to Madeleine Lemaire.

A farewell toast at our hotel to cap off the day and our Proust adventure together.
Dinner on your own.

Tour leader: Hollie Harder is an Associate Professor of French at Brandeis University in Waltham, Ma., where she has been teaching since 1992. She Completed her doctoral dissertation on the character Francoise in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time under the direction of Roger Shattuck at Boston University.She has published on Marcel Proust in Modern Language Notes and in the Cambridge Companion to Proust, and she leads the Boston chapter of the Proust Society of America at the Boston Athenaeum. Hollie spent a great deal of her sabbatical in Paris.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the date of the next Proust tour is far in the future But if you have any interest at all, let us know so we can keep you updated On plans.

Our Proust in Paris Tour offers much more than an exploration of arguably the greatest novel ever written seen against the backdrop of the life of Marcel Proust, “his” Paris and the times in which he lived and wrote. Expect to be challenged and inspired by lively discussions and debate of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME .

SWT Tours total commitment is to offer you the best of all of Paris to enhance this unique literary experience.

Long years of Paris visits (well over 100) have evolved a superb list of guides and activities. We stay at our favorite boutique hotel in the 6^th arrondisement, nosh at some amazing food shops. Introduce you to a crop of interesting restaurants that may have never been on your radar. Paris’ leading English bookshops with lively author special events are part of the mix and we throw in a sprinkling of encounters with expats, all loving the life they live in Paris.

There’s a no smoking ban in restaurants and public places but that just means that everybody smokes on the street. It’s an epidemic and it’s mostly women doing the puffing.

Color has finally made it to Paris…no more exclusively black clothing. Women are wearing bright jackets, the best are belted. Too many jeans but colorful coats and scarves are a “must have”. Young men have adopted scruffy beards, think of a 3 day old growth and their hair is very spiked via mousse. The best looking are not wearing puffy jackets but sleek hip length black coats. And don’t forget,as soon as you sit down for a coffee or a meal, put your cell phone on the table. Learn to make an espresso last for hours.

Meals…the brunch concept has arrived in Paris, full force. And lots of top chefs have followed Joel Robluchon and his concept of haut cuisine eating at a bar. His Atelier, with only bar seating, is a favorite.

Macarons in every color with a variety of fillings are the rage at Pierre Herme and Laduree. I even took a class in how to make macarons. Pretty complicated but I may give it a try. Desserts served in small glasses are another big trend. Called “verrines” they hit the food scene about six months ago. Think layers of flavors stacked in a glass, for example, passion fruit, cream cheese, bits of orange with a crumb topping and tiny cubes of sugar

I continue to be amazed at the various Parisian food halls that rival Harrod’s in London. Bon Marche’s Grande Epicere and Galeries Lafayette are superb. I love the breakfast pastries at Bon Marche and the teeny tiny breads sold on a skewer. Had a serrano ham with manchego cheese sandwich at Galeries Lafayette and a delicious pasta lunch.

Spent most of a day at the Louvre looking at some of Proust favorite paintings. There are 31 mentioned in the novel. Using Eric Karpeles book, Paintings in Proust , adds immeasureably to viewing the paintings especially because the author gives the actual quotes from the novel referring to each picture. And wonder of wonders, I found an easy way to find the paintings without walking in circles.

Join us for this unique homage to Proust with a splash of what’s new and happening in Paris…Much more to share.

Proust in Paris, Illiers-Combray and Cabourg (Balbec)