Birthday in Paris: Part 2

Paris is divided into arrondissements (neighborhoods) and each is numbered, starting in the city center and spiraling outwards. We departed our hotel in the 8th, and began a counter clock-wise walk around to explore and get the lay of the land.

First we crossed the Champs-Élysées into a garden to find a massive Beaux-Arts style palace appropriately named the Grand Palais. It’s part national art gallery, part science museum, and part police station (?). Across the road is another huge ornate palace. Since it’s a slightly smaller palace than the first one, the French call it Petit Palais. Assume from here onward, the terms grand and petite are being used on a sliding scale. In addition to these sit three slightly-less-than-petite theaters of equal decoration. A comparatively modest statue of Winston Churchill stands on the far corner.

Next we crossed the fanciest bridge I’ve ever seen (Pont Alexandre III) over the Seine river to the Rive Gauche (left bank). Regular bridges are simply beneath Paris. It’s gold leaf or GTFO around here. Also worth noting, one of the most confusing aspects we found aside from the language is the whole Left Bank / Right Bank thing. The river runs horizontally across the city. This division creates (logically) a north bank and a south bank. It does not appear to be a left/right type of situation at all. Whoever decided this must have been thoroughly drunk, thoroughly mad, or maybe just…French.

On the Left/South bank sits the sprawling Hôtel des Invalides. It is not a hotel at all, or else we would have stayed there because it looks very fancy and most likely to have a gold swimming pool with a tiled bottom of naked people in pastoral repose. Instead, Invalides is another stunning complex of museums (this one history and military-themed), a hospital, a retirement home for war vets, a church, a restaurant, a bookshop, a gift shop, and many, many dead people including Napoleon Bonaparte. Nearby is Hôtel Matignon, also not a hotel. The Prime Minister of France lives there, according to Google. We decided to add the word “hotel" to the list of French things that do not mean what we think they mean.

Continuing along the river down into the 6th arrondissement, we discover Le Jardin du Luxembourg. The gardens (built in 1612) are massive in scale, sort of like Central Park, but symmetrical in detail and manicured to perfection. There are hundreds of statues, including an entire area dedicated to queens and notable women of France. Fountains and pathways beg you to follow in every direction. There is a fruit orchard, a bee house, an art gallery, a playground, a puppet theater, half a dozen restaurants, several crepe stands, and zero open bathrooms.

In the center opposite a reflecting pool sits the Palais du Luxembourg, former home to Marie de’ Medici (Henry the 4th’s widow) and currently home to the Senate. I wanted to go in and use their probably gold-leafed toilet but apparently there were Senatey-things happening so I had to pee at a McDonald’s across the street. We didn’t eat there because it’s McDonald’s and we had to preserve what tiny splinter of class we could as a pair of American tourists.

That splinter lasted about ten minutes until we passed a tourist souvenir shop and I begged Mike to put on a beret. If he'd been smoking a cigarette with a baguette under his arm, we could have sold the photo to a travel agency for their Paris vacation marketing collateral.

We continued to walk and gape at the architectural grandeur. Everything was a historical palace/cathedral/museum/burial ground. Like the Pantheon, in which Marie Curie, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and Descartes were entombed. Or the 13th century Church of St. Séverin, which is precisely what comes to mind when you think of the word “medieval.” Huge blocks of colorless stone topped with cold black wrought iron spikes, all held up by an endless array of gothic arches, and closely guarded by despairing marble saints. It was beautiful. I was ready to move in immediately.

Nothing makes you feel quite as home in a new place like finding the local comic book store, though. Album Comics along Boulevard Saint-Germain in the 5th arrondissement might be one of the most impressive comic book shops I’ve ever been in, on par with Forbidden Planet in New York. Immaculately decorated from floor to ceiling, well-stocked, filled with rare treasures, and staff by welcoming people. The Star Wars wing of the store was awesome and Mike acquired a fantastic set of black and white graphic Star Wars plates.

On my bucket list of must-see places was Shakespeare and Company, a famous independent bookstore nearly a century old. Much like any great indie, it’s a fantastic hub for writers, artists, and creative types. Back in the day, it was the hangout spot for Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mina Loy, and James Joyce. Today the reading nooks and crannies are packed with modern literary buffs and chill fluffy cats. I also want to move in here.

The portion of the shop on the right has new and used books. The shop in the middle has rare antique volumes. And the shop on the left is a fabulous cafe where you can grab an espresso and chocolate sticky bun, then sit outside with your new book (the title page of which has been stamped by the booksellers as proof of your pilgrimage).

By this point it was late afternoon and we were dragging our feet. We needed a quiet spot to kick back for a while, so we headed over to the Île de la Cité, the heart of Paris and of Notre-Dame Cathedral. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the scale and beauty of Notre-Dame. The late winter sun setting through its famed rose windows will leave anyone breathless. The pews are dark and strangely quiet despite the sheer multitude of tourists milling around you. It’s quite easy to fall into them for a spell while you recharge.

Once we revived a bit, we strolled around the chapels which line the interior. Massive oil paintings, statue, reliquary, tombs, and ornamentation are around every corner. Napoleon’s coronation robes are there. Supposedly Christ’s crown of thorns are there too but I didn’t see it because they only haul it out for special occasions. It's probably not even real anyway. Never mind though, because there are way cooler things to see. Like the mausoleum of Le comte Claude-Henry d’Harcourt, which is practically an Iron Maiden album cover rendered in 3D.

"La Réunion Conjugale" by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785)

At this point, Mike and I were thoroughly exhausted. We made our way back over to the Right/North bank and strolled through the Tuileries gardens on way back to our hotel (traditional definition of hotel this time). During spring and summer the gardens are filled with lush greenery. In winter they create a hauntingly beautiful landscape that feels a little like post-apocalyptic Narnia where everyone’s dead and the White Witch rules unseen from a hidden fortress. Snow flurries arrived on swift winds and the trees whispered darkly to one another. Mike shivered. I hailed an Uber from my phone to carry us the rest of the way back.

Another thing we learned about France was that Parisians have set times for meals. Dinner is strictly from 7:30pm-10:30pm. Most restaurants aren’t open before and will actually be on the empty side until after 8. When you’re crossing time zones (twice, US and UK), it’s tough adapting. The good news is, once you’re in a restaurant, the wait staff will never rush you out of your table. Also, the wine list will go on for miles.

We decided to up the game for our second night in Paris. Using La Fourchette (French version of Trip Advisor) we discovered Le Boudoir, a Michelin rated restaurant just around the corner. At 7:30pm, we were the only people in the restaurant and had a private dining room to ourselves. Maybe it was odd to them but we loved it. The manager (I think) began with a brief history of the restaurant and the chef. Then he walked us through the menu, describing the various dishes and making recommendations. He did not elaborate why there was a portrait of Batman in the hallway leading to the toilets. It is a mystery to us to this day.

We chose to start with their signature appetizer: poultry pie with foie gras, onion confit, and foliage emulsion. It looked like a tin of Fancy Feast cat food to the eye but this is what the chef is know for and “when in France.” It was quite lovely, savory pieces of chicken and duck held together with beautiful foie gras (I think). Then our sommelier carefully selected a wine for our entrees: a pitch-perfect beef tenderloin with some magical sauce in a little carafe for me and a rolled chicken breast prepared in a cardamom cream sauce for Mike. I cannot accurately describe the flavors we experienced. I can only tell you that we ate every morsel and then proceeded to wipe the plates clean with slices of bread. There was no room for dessert.

In the after glow of our world-class meal, we strolled over to the bank of the Seine for a grand view of Tour Eiffel. I didn’t know it sparkled with lights like that. Some things can still surprise you. It’s good to pause every now and again and just take it all in. Be in the moment and all that.