Paris

Ah Paris!! City of Light! City of Love! City that heals broken hearts! Hemingway writes “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

I was lucky enough to get to live in Paris as a young woman, and I have, indeed, carried that moveable feast with me ever since. Glowing stone buildings, quaint bookshops overlooking ancient cathedrals, curling windows, a river covered by sighing bridges and a glittering tower of light. I have always wanted to share my love of Paris with my children. So, after a profoundly traumatic couple of years for our family, with the loss of my father to cancer, my best friend to suicide, and my ex-husband to infidelity, I decided to sell my jewels (AKA broken empty promises) and take my children on a dream trip. Forget platinum and diamonds! Give me my children and my niece, a park bench and a warm crepe and an old book of poetry on a summer evening in Paris! Magical moments we can treasure forever.

Favorite Memories:

1. Floating through Van Gogh’s paintings made of light and music at Atelier Lumens and my teens sitting on the floor spellbound, our hearts soaring in awe.
2. Zooming around gorgeous Paris in an open air golf cart called a “Tuk-Tuk” singing and dancing to the jambox speaker given to us by the driver (who showed us how to sync our phones with it.)
3. Swing dancing in a medieval torture chamber called La Caveau de la Huchette (and when I leaned over to my 13-year-old son and said, “Can you believe this used to be a torture chamber?” He didn’t miss a beat and replied in a bored voice, “Yes I can.” But then he headed out and twirled his sister and cousin and Mom and all those years of them watching Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly paid off! The boy can dance!)
4. Looking out the window of our suite every night, watching the Eiffel Tower glitter in all its glory while listening to Je Suis Seul Ce Soir.
5. Eating pizza next to the river as the street lamps came on and the most gorgeous bridge in Paris lit up, the Pont Alexandre.
6. Laughing until we were gasping in an overheated Indian restaurant in St. Michel during a heat wave with no air conditioning.

My love affair with Paris started when I was a child, even though I had never been. I used to tear out ads for Paris perfume and tape them on my wall, dreaming of the day when I could stand in front of the Eiffel Tower with an arm full of roses. When I left home at 18 and found myself at Santa Monica College, the first thing I did was check out their Study Abroad program in Paris. I worked five jobs for five months and saved enough money to go.

I fell madly in love with the city, passionately studying the writers, the literature, the art, architecture, the mysticism, and history. While most of the students stayed on campus, I roamed the city every day all day, finding endless beauty and inspiration around every corner. I returned a few times over the years with my sisters, dear friends, and my true love, Kim, and every single time, I found a treasure trove of magic all over the city.

I was beyond excited to share my love for Paris with my teenagers. I hoped it would have a profound affect on them like it did me, and if not now, then later in their lives when they started studying art and reading great literature, like Anais Nin and Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein, and that they would connect to it in a deeper way, having walked the same streets as the artists and writers. Paris is overflowing with creativity and beauty, and something about it’s history and beauty heals the soul.

But our arrival was less than ideal.

We arrived after a fairy tale week in Venice and a dreamy trip on the Orient Express. The gorgeous luxury train pulled into the Paris station and waved goodbye as we stood in our heels and feathered hats at a dirty graffiti-filled trainstop with no darling bell hop to carry our luggage to a wooden boat that would speed us to our next hotel. I was determined to make Paris as charming as Venice, but there was no charm in dragging our sparkling pink suitcases and hatboxes to a dilapidated mini van with a grumpy driver who grunted instead of spoke. We arrived at our hotel, the Balzac,recommneded by a friend. Hotel Balzac is a boutique hotel right off the Champs Elysee, and we were thrilled to be shown to our suite on the top floor with our very own terrace that looked over the rooftops of Paris and straight at the Eiffel Tower.  (We weren’t quite as thrilled later when our room kept mysteriously erupting in the smell of cigarette smoke and the elevator broke, leaving us to trudge up 6 floors worth of stairs, but we push that to that to the back of our minds and focus on the good parts.)

I didn’t want us to miss a moment, so we stashed our luggage and took a car straight to our reservations at renowned bakery/restaurant, Angelina. The last time I was in Paris, I had passed Angelina and wondered why everyone was standing in lines around the block. I used my detective skills to google the place and learned it was a world-famous bakery. How in the world did I miss a world-famous bakery? Bakeries are one of the things that are usually high on my radar. Angelina’s was charming, and lovely, and while we loved the ambience, we didn’t love the food, but we didn’t care… we were in Paris!!

After some hot chocolate and croissants, we walked through the Tuileries, taking in the lush gardens and flowers and stopping to ride the merry-go-round on the way. We eventually made our way to the Louvre. It was packed of course, and I had planned for us to go a different day, but decided carpe diem! We bought passes and descended down under the glass pyramid as if we were entering the Davinci Code or a Percy Jackson adventure. We joined the throngs to get a peek at the Mona Lisa, which feels a lot like standing outside a concert to get a glimpse of some rock star. We also saw some of my favorite impressionist paintings, and one of my all-time favorite sculptures, Winged Victory, standing erect in all its magnificent glory at the top of a stairway. With its powerful wings and headless body, Winged Victory had a message for me. Sculpted in marble more than two thousand years ago, it brought tears to my eyes thinking of how truly magnificent humans can be, creating something so incredible. When I visited Winged Victory here in 1998, I remember standing in awe before it, when a class full of blind children came and stood near me. Their teachers whispered in their ears what it looked like, and I was humbled to the point of tears and filled with immense gratitude that I am able to see something so stunning.

After everything we have been through—the kids losing their grandfather, their father, and their auntie… Winged Victory was encouraging us to stay strong and be magnificent. And whomever sculpted it… well could they have guessed that two thousand years later it would be inspiring people to heal and rise and unfurl their own wings in all their glory?

We retired early that night to our suite to recover from our journey, standing on the balcony of our suite, listening to Edith Piaf sing La Vie En Rose and watching the Paris rooftops glow and glitter. Give your heart and soul to me and life will always be La VIe En Rose.

The next morning we had breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien off the Champs Elysee–organic and delicious. We love eating at Le Pain Quotidien in NYC, but it was even better in Paris!

Then we made our way to one of my all-time favorite museums, Musee D’Orsay, where I was so excited to show the kids more works of art that so inspired me—Renoir, Degas , Van Gogh, Bougereau… Even the building itself is a work of art, as the museum is housed in an exquisite old train station on the Seine. I can’t really describe the feeling of watching the kids look at their first Van Gogh, the swirling colors, the thick passionate paint, the curving lines… Of course the kids barely never talk about the art, but the girls often talk about the cute boy they saw.

From there we had lunch in St. Germain at a charming restaurant covered in pink flowers and a sidewalk cafe called Le Moliere.

On a whim, we decided to take a Tuk Tuk all the way to Bois De Bologne to see the new contemporary Louis Vuitton museum. It’s not a museum full of LV items, it’s just owned by the same company that owns LV who decided to create a beautiful place for their art collection and to open it to the public. The building itself is sight to behold, but the kids favorite part was walking out of the museum to an adorable little amusement park with small rollercoasters and rides and churros. It was so picturesque with its old fashioned clocks and darling little rides. My Boston bestie, a glamorous frenchman named Tristan, was in Paris the same time as us. He made friends with a roaming peacock, and he talked to it and they walked around together–takes one to know one–and the kids had a ball. The park closed and it started getting late. I have heard stories of the crime in the Bois de Bologne for years, and there were no ubers or private cars to hire, so we boarded a very crowded shuttle and had a very unpleasant packed miserable ride back to the Champs Elysee.

Top on my list when visiting Paris is visiting my favorite bookshop in the world: Shakespeare and Co. It was evening, so it was closed, but we stood outside and I told them all the stories that so captivated me about the bookshop: the story of Sylvia Beach and her lover, how no one would publish Ulysses by James Joyce so Sylvia published it herself, believing Joyce to be brilliant; how the writers never had any money so Sylvia let them use the bookshop as a library and place to receive their mail; how they could sleep there if necessary, and they would climb out the window and read poetry by candlelight at midnight, and later when George Whitman took it over, backpackers and students could stay there and work there and sleep among the books…so many wonderful stories.

Then we walked down the street and found La Caveau De La Huchette, the medieval torture chamber-turned swing dancing club. Straight out of the beatnik scene in Funny Face, there is always a live band downstairs and swing dancers being thrown in the air and jubilantly jumping, jiving, and wailing. It’s ole school, loud, smoky, and crowded and oh so glorious. We all danced until we were ready for bed and we made our way back to our hotel in the lantern lit streets.

Another highlight: Musee De Rodin. Always one of my favorites that I return to over and over, as a young woman I was obsessed with Camille Claudel and the whole doomed Rodin-Camille love affair. Sadly, I know a thing or two about lost love, impossible love, and abandonment. So much passion is sculpted into that clay. Unfortunately, the museum wasn’t air conditioned and looking at the art with sweat rolling down your back kind of ruins the enchantment. We did have fun, however, doing cartwheels around the beautiful gardens and a butterfly landed on Henry’s hand, which reignited our enchantment.

The biggest highlight of Paris for me was the Atelier Lumens—a pop-up art exhibit featuring Van Gogh’s paintings made of light, completely immersive with music, light, color… I wept. I was so thrilled this was one of the kid’s first exposures to Van Gogh, and while they didn’t seem to be as taken with it as I was, I hope someday they will look back and feel it. I have always wanted to dissolve into a Van Gogh painting, to swim through his swirling vibrant colors. Lumens gave me that chance, and the community feel of everyone experiencing it at the same time was wonderful.

I have a friend who grew up in Paris, and he introduced us to our new favorite pizza place—Rosa Bonheur—an outdoor seating place on the Seine, frequented by locals, where you can get pizza and a glass of wine for under $10 in a fun convivial atmosphere. We of course called is Rosa Boner, and laughed every time. We ate there several times.

Also, the kids played Ninja all over the streets of Paris.

Another fabulous restaurant experience: Kong, which gets an A for sheer drama as it’s on top of a tall building with windows overlooking the gorgeous city. Our favorite meal however, was at Miss Ko, a hip Asian fusion restaurant right off the Champs Elysee, with parasols hanging from the ceiling and menus in disguise as passports. The food was fantastic and innovative.

We left Paris to journey to the countryside, which I write about in my blogs about Chateau Des Milandes and Burgundy, but when we returned, we met up with one of my best friends from LA who now lives in Alaska, Courtney. Courtney has two sons the same age as my teens and one of them was with her. She talked me into trying out an AirBnB near Les Halles. With four of us, it was the same price for me as a nice hotel, except we had to shlep our eight pieces of heavy luggage up five flights of curling stairs; had to turn off the air conditioning when we left the place–meaning it was stifling when we returned–and had to keep buckets under the air units that we also had to empty. No bell hop, no room service, no valet, no thank you! Even so, it was a dream to stay in Paris with a dear friend like Courtney, and when we finally did make it up the eight flights of stairs, she greeted us with a beautiful spread of wine, cheese, and crackers. one thing about Courtney is that she is hilarious. We never stopped laughing. We went on the ferris wheel in the Tuileries in the record breaking heat and sang “I’m on the Top of the World” by the Carpenters. It was too hot to eat in most restaurants, so when we stopped at a pizza place for a late lunch, they dragged tables out onto the street for us.

Courtney needed to elevate her feet so she and the kids rested at our place and I took a Tuk tuk on my own to meet my glamorous friend, a writer and historian, Leslie Zemeckis. She had just stepped out of a bubble bath, and I had just stepped out of a hot sweaty Tuk Tuk, so one of us was more refreshed than the other. We drank cold champagne and talked about our books and our other favorite topic, burlesque. If you haven’t read her witty, smart biographies, YOU MUST! She’s a fabulous writer shining a light on incredible women who were marginalized by society. My favorite is Goddess of Love Incarnate: The Life of Stripteuse Lili St. Cyr, but love all her books.

Later that night, our last night together with Courtney and her son, we wanted a magical dinner experience for all of us, and the kids wanted Mexican food, so we found a restaurant but with no air conditioning we promptly walked out. We took a car to St. Michel, and by now everyone was starving. We passed a jazz club and the music filled the air as we walked. Paris didn’t disappoint as the light changed and the twinkle lights turned on and we were all enchanted. We happened to pass Shakespeare and Co. again and it was open! I was thrilled to go in and went on a book-buying frenzy at my favorite bookshop. After all that searching, we ended up in an indian restaurant with no air conditioning. We no longer cared about the heat because we were too hungry and it was getting late. I think we were all slap happy because my daughter, Annabelle, started doing a comedy routine based on something Courtney said and we all were doubled over laughing with tears running down our faces. It turned out to be our favorite meal because we laughed to hard.

We ended the night with a trip to the Eiffel Tower and stood under the glittering icon with the wind whipping our hair and our arms around each other. It was a perfect ending to a dream trip, each memory a treasure we can carry forever, like a moveable feast.