Hemingway’s Bar

Hemingway’s Bar. I recall the joy, my enthralled awe as I plunked my butt on a stool at Hemingway’s Bar in Paris. It was long before I set my intention to write a book, yet I succumbed to the immediate allure, the pretense of sitting in his place. Heady stuff, the generalized thrill of adventure that I seek. Even now I can taste the drink. Perhaps it was the elixir that propelled my writing, though I tend to think it’s genes, as well as the thousands of hours and dollars I’ve invested in the craft.

As our travel arena expanded, we began to notice Hemingway’s Bar scattered about Europe – even in Key West – on the par of “George Washington slept here” on the eastern seaboard, the colonial heart of the US.

Or “Richard the Lion-Hearted stayed in that castle”, a phrase we heard throughout our Danube cruise. After all, it was a long way from England to fight the religious right battles with the Moors – and a long way back with pieces of the cross to bestow to church elders, the booty of the Crusades. Richard and gang crusaded 4-5 times – and there were others, more.

This post was propelled by travel of a different sort: I traveled back into the heady days of Hemingway’s urge-filled life by listening to the audio version of ‘The Paris Wife’, a highly-literate and informed tale in the POV of his wife, written by Paula McLain. I recommend it for your reading pleasure.

Pleasure could have been Hemingway’s middle name…he was a mess of a man, however lofty his prose.

Hemingway may have set the bar, but I am doing my best to achieve: this is my 250th blog post, just beyond the two year point when I initiated this practice, my twice weekly commitment to write. It’s a quest as fervent as Don Quixote’s, but hopefully not as futile.

Like our thirst for adventurous travel, for which Hemingway set quite a bar, too.

It’s coming up on Santa’s travel night, which I wrote a blog post about last week – https://www.pjcolando.com/physics-christmas/

Followed by recall of the Three Wise Men’s worshipful trek…pardon the irreverence of this sign.

Yes, my mind is an adventurous wanderer, making connections point-to-point that others may not make.

What quests are yours, Constant Reader?