Paris, Third Time Is a Charm

Paris is beautiful, wonderful and incomparable. What can be written about Paris that doesn't read trite? Yet there is nothing trite about Paris. It is so exhilarating that I wish it were possible to preserve and bottle Parisian impressions, feelings and inspirations in order to be able to savor them, like photographs, for years to come.

I had been in Paris thirty-eight years ago, in 1979. It was only for one night. We were in transit, having arrived on the Chunnel train from London to meet my father and his rental car the next morning, then immediately drive to Hungary. There was time only for one evening and sleep. Our hotel was below Montmartre where I walked that evening, past the Moulin Rouge, to see the Sacre Coeur and hear French hippies sitting on sunny steps playing guitar and singing the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, "Sweet Home Alabama", with a sweet French accent.

The time before that was in 1967. I was thirteen. All I remember from that occasion is overcast weather, driving through the Place de la Concorde, driving by the Invalides and the Arch de Triomph, and taking a ride up the Eiffel Tower. My Dad had a car and an agenda, so to see places, we mostly just drove by them.

This third time around was magical. It began with a pleasant taxi drive from the airport to our hotel on Rue de Pont Neuf. Shari chatted with our driver, Rashid, of Moroccan Berber heritage with a degree in architecture. Shari joked about "no Trump", a disclaimer we quickly made anytime we spoke with a local. I mostly watched and video-recorded the street in front of us, increasingly mesmerized as Rashid drove deeper into old Paris. Rashid noticed me video-recording. He pointed to the small arch in front of us (the Porte Saint-Denis) saying it was the Arch de Triomph. He was pulling my leg and I fell for it, remarking it was smaller than I remembered. There is so much to see in Paris.

Our hotel, the Best Western Ducs de Bourgogne, was two blocks from Pont Neuf. I think the rooms had recently been remodeled because ours was very nice. Its elegance included USB ports intergrated with every electical outlet, a Keurig-type single cup espresso machine, and a Japanese toilet with an electronic console to adjust the built-in seat warmer and the various directions, strength and temperature of bidet showers (i.e., whether from fore or aft). The hotel's downstairs dining room was closed for remodel so our petit déjeuner arrived with room service in a paper bag, but that was a minor inconvenience. “Ducs de Bourgogne”? Any hotel named after the Dukes of Burgundy — I mean, how bad can that be?

Aboard the Seine cruise before we got up and changed seats
to get away from the insane, incessant, juvenile and
irrelevant prattle of the cell phone toting girls behind us.
Why travel and stay in Paris if you are not going
to actually be in Paris?

Shari and I settled in, locked valuables in the room safe, then walked to the Pont Neuf. We gazed at the view of the city upstream and downstream. Shari noticed a dockside sign by the quay advertising the next Bateau Mouche Seine River cruise. Somewhat spontaneously for us, we decided to buy tickets, then enjoyed an exhilarating hour of exquisite riparian city sight-seeing. We stared not just at buildings, but at people relaxing, enjoying the sun, and celebrating by the river. It was Saturday. People were sunbathing in folding deck chairs, and sitting, sipping and eating in cafes. There was even a couple in wedding dress and tuxedo posing for their wedding photographer. Several of us on the tour boat waved and hooted. The couple smiled back.

We enjoyed a simple dinner at Cafe le Zimmer founded by Alsace-French immigrants after the Franco-Prussian War, all furnished and decorated in elegantly ornate late 19th Century style. Its website states, "The Zimmer has always been popular with artists and writers, its clientele has included legendary figures such as Jules Verne, Emile Zola, Sarah Bernhardt, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini, Edmond Rostand, Marcel Proust, Serge de Diaghilev, Guillaume Apollinaire, Igor Stravinski, Vaslav Nijinski, and Pablo Picasso among many others". It has menus in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Russian.

Shari had a hamburger and I ordered the "Layered Manchego": "Spanish cheese, artichoke heart, cured ham, all lightly seared and served on a bed of lettuce." It was still early. Even so, I enjoyed my caipirinha, marveling at how the traditional Brazilian sugarcane cachaça spirits and lime, a cocktail I had enjoyed in Brazil three decades before, had become universal in Europe. The caipirinha was faithful to the original.

After dinner, still antsy with enthusiasm, I walked to the Notre Dame for sunset and moon-rise, but it was too late to go inside. The church was closed for the night. The open space in front of the church spaciously accommodated scores of evening tourists with selfie-sticks taking portraits of themselves with the church in the background. Who can blame them? I indulged in a couple of selfies myself.

Still antsy the following morning, I again walked to Notre Dame so I could go inside and take pictures of its famous rose windows. It was Sunday morning and the faithful were hearing mass, politely cordoned off with ropes from the circling crowded flows of somewhat hushed tourists.

Shari and I also took an early stroll through the north end of the Marais district. We noticed, in addition to the usual urban homeless, several sleeping Roma families tucked beneath and between niches of buildings, resting on cardboard and comfortable bedding. Many children were sound asleep on top of their parents. (Later I, Shari asked about the street sleeping Roma from her step-sister Brigitte who manages a large charity for Cambodian children. She told us that most of them have homes in Eastern Europe and prefer to spend their summers in the streets of Paris where they can make more money begging or whatever else they do in Paris.)

That Sunday afternoon we had lunch in Montgeron. Armed with written instructions on which metro train to catch, carrying our trusty smart phone with a downloaded map of Paris and environs, carefully interpreting metro maps and ticket counter directions at the Châtelet station, but mostly relying upon Shari's innate sense of purpose and her ability to fearlessly ask strangers for directions, we successfully rode some 35 km. on two trains to reach Montgeron, a village that has remained a somewhat rural and still quiet suburb to the southeast of Paris.

We were the guests of Thibaud and Virginie Houdiniere. They are family. Shari's stepmother is Thibaud's grandmother. Shari had met Thibaud on a previous visits to Paris and Florida — but those are long stories. Suffice it to write that we were very eager to spend some time with Thibaud and his family. He and his youngest daughter, two and a half year old Apolline, were waiting for us at the Montgeron train station. Thibaud wanted to show us the short walk to their home. Apolline, sitting safely in a stroller, was eager to be with her dad to greet us.

Virginie had prepared an excellent picnic lunch served over elegant courses for which the French have so much . . . je ne sais pas . . . panache. Several kinds of sausages and salamis, pâté stuffed figs, a Thai rice, pastries, an assortment of cheeses, all accompanied by famously French baguettes. We ate on a picnic table in their walled backyard. Their two older children, Madeleine and Lysandre, alternated time riding bikes around the table, swinging on swings, and feasting on the various dishes. Thibaud took Apolline upstairs and disappeared for a few minutes. She had became tired and Thibaud read to her long enough so that she could take her afternoon nap.

It is tough to imagine a nicer Sunday afternoon.

We located a laundromat near our hotel. Unbeknownst to us at the time, it was the one and only opportunity we ever had on this European odyssey to use a laundromat. All our other laundry was discretely washed in hotel sinks.

The coin box is hidden far right, by the back counter
and behind the machine that dispenses soap packets.

Operating the coin machines presented some personal challenges similar to my struggle with keyless ignition rental cars: the setup was different. Unlike every other laundromat I have used where each machine has its own box that accepts coins, there was one central coin machine, hidden by the back counter. The ironing lady in back who also served as an attendant had to point it out with a certain amount of surely abruptness as if to communicate, "It's a laundromat. It's not rocket science." Once we noticed the central machine and read its instructions, we loaded and fired up our washing and drying machines with no problem. We got so good at it that we gave instructions to the next two sets of customers, both English-speaking tourists. The attendant did not have to be bothered.

Laundry washed and folded, we returned to our modern-appointed hotel room where Shari took rest. I wanted to see what my Dad had only driven by fifty years earlier. I walked to the Place de la Concorde, then halfway to the Arch de Triomphe before returning via the Tuileries. Not surprisingly given recent history, I saw lots of police armed with automatic weapons. They were present, but not intrusive. More surprisingly given recent history, people were out in droves on the Champs-Élysées, tourists and Parisiens alike. They were sitting on benches, enjoying a promenade, taking selfies, coming out from stores carrying shopping bags, and, of course, sipping and nibbling in sidewalk cafes. The Tuileries gardens were equally crowded, although more restful. People had brought their own folding chairs to sit around the water features and enjoy a Sunday picnic. I walked over ten exhilarating kilometers that day.

Restaurant-cafes lined the streets from our hotel on Rue du Pont Neuf to the streets around the Jardin de Nelson Mandela. We decided upon the Hippopotamus, a French steakhouse. It had begun to drizzle so sitting at tables on the sidewalk was not an option. The Hippopotamus menu of cocktails included several different martinis, one of which was entitled Americaine. I bit the bait. I should have ordered the caipirinha. What was delivered as an American martini was reddish with sweet bitters that overwhelmed any suggestion of gin. The steaks with elegant pomme frit went down better with tap beer. We turned in early, eager to sink into our large bed and rest in anticipation of one more full day in Paris: the Louvre and a Corsican dinner.