APRIL IN PARIS
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We’re off!
Wheels up at 10:30 PM on Friday, April 19, landing at Charles de Gaulle midmorning on Saturday, then Uber-ing to the Melia Paris Vendome, a sweet little boutique hotel in the 1st arrondissement of this chic city. Groggy but determined to keep moving, we stashed our luggage at the front desk and headed off, asking directions in our “pigeon French” to the Big Red Hop-On Hop-Off open-air bus that careens around plazas and slices through claustrophobic traffic with incessant honking before dropping passengers at the premiere picture postcard sites of Paris.
And so it began … a week with my daughter and granddaughter making memories in the City of Lights … sipping cafe au lait in flower-bedecked bistros, nibbling flaky croissants with apricot jam for breakfast, walking through the Hall of Mirrors and eyeballing the oh-so-feminine Queen’s Bedroom at Versailles, dining on herb-crusted lamb medallions at a restaurant INSIDE the Eiffel Tower, boarding a bateaux mouche to cruise the Seine under grey skies, buying colorful cozy scarves to fend off the 52 degree nip in the air, having dinner at the sumptuous Parisian home of Chantal and Francois (friends for more than 40 years), and standing in a long line at Musee d’Orsay to immerse ourselves in the Impressionists. Alex said, “I know these Degas and Monet paintings from books but I’ve never seen them in person!”
That first night, feeling creaky and old, I decided to take a hot bath. PERSONAL WARNING: be sure to measure your French hotel tub before you attempt this and blithely step in. My tub looked inviting but it was 4’ deep and only 20” wide. (Petite, the locals say.) Hoisting and extracting my slippery fatigued body (OMG, with an achy shoulder and sore knee, no less) from this slick porcelain pit took 20 groaning minutes. Thereafter, I used the detachable shower head, aka French phone.
Alex and I had itemized our itinerary to show 18-year-old Maddie the “best of Paris” but not ALL of Paris. Our agenda was seeing/doing one major event/site a day, leaving time to stroll through Montmartre, browse open air markets and also scout for a potential senior prom dress for Maddie at Galeries Lafayette. (Note: Maddie is 6’1” and, when she pulls her long blonde hair up in a top-knot, stands closer to 6’3”. French dresses are micro-short. They barely cover the mademoiselles’ thongs. We found a few possibilities and Maddie is planning to visit a tanning salon to brown her lengthy gams.)
Each of us had a favorite meal. Mine was at Angelina’s, a sophisticated teahouse on the rue de Rivoli, a breath from the Tuileries Gardens, where I dined on the most delicious salmon — gravlax atop a thin layer of braised white cabbage, then topped with red ripe currant berries and lightly doused with Savora sauce (an ambrosia of mustard seeds, cinnamon, vinegar, honey and other goodies). I didn’t want lunch to end.
“TREMENDOUS!” Alex declared as she ate her deliciously-infused fromage-burger at Ferdi, a bistro lionized for its cheeseburgers and also a hangout of supermodels Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner. (They were undoubtedly on a shoot in Rome that day because we didn’t see them sipping Savignon blanc at the next table.) Maddie’s memorable meal was undoubtedly the thick chocolate fondue she dipped apples and pears into at Les Fondues de la Raclette. But it could be the churros she slathered in chocolate sauce at Cafe Caretta.
Our croissant-making class Wednesday afternoon at Maison Fleuret Baking School revealed there is almost as much butter in those delectable goodies as flour. (And I thought they were dietetic because of their lightness!) We watched as the instructor (named “Ke”) demonstrated how to roll the flour-water-mixture on the sizable wooden island. Then she announced, “Now it is your turn.” The class was truly hands-on. For the next hour, we kneaded and rolled, then cut that dough into triangles and wrapped them up. We even used any scraps to make miniature cinnamon buns. When the assortment came out of the oven, I thought, Mon Dieu. They looked just like the croissants at the Boulangerie in Kennebunk, and tasted even better. Merci, Ke.
Pre-registering for private tours proved to be a bonus. At Versailles, our group of five walked past lengthy lines as we followed guide Marion along the cobblestones to a special “private tours only” entry. (I was amazed that during our entire six hour visit, I never spotted a scrap of litter anywhere on the 2,014 acres or inside the 721,206 square-foot palace. I never saw a trash bin either.)
On Thursday night, we Uber-ed to Moulin Rouge for a dinner show. Before we’d left home, Alex said, “I want Maddie to see the cancan girls,” Well .… Maddie saw a lot more than that. Beautiful topless ladies in gigantic feathered head pieces and strategically-placed sequins strutted across the stage. Acrobats performed heart-palpitating leaps and splits. Dancers thrust their legs and hips here, there and everywhere, and the show was a positive dazzler. Good call by Alex.
Half of Paris seemed to be at the Louvre on Friday night. But despite the massive crowds, we zipped in with our private guide and were soon standing in front of the Mona Lisa … along with about 568 other people taking selfie after selfie with their iPhones. I’d forgotten how small the painting is!
Two special Parisian moments linger in my mind. Seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkle, beginning at 10 PM each night, underscores why Paris is called the City of Lights. It’s so exciting when the twinkling lights turn on!
The other moment happened during a tour inside and to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. To get there, we walked in semi-darkness through a long tunnel under the Champs-Elysees. Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” being played energetically on violin by an elderly gentleman wearing a blue beret. As we passed him, I recognized that he was playing “Spring,” the first concerto in that familiar Baroque music piece.
How perfect for our April in Paris!
