Last weekend, we took David's parents to the airport in Edinburgh for their return flight home, and Emma and I caught a flight to Paris a few hours later. A trip to Paris had been her birthday gift in February, and since we had Hamilton friends who were spending the semester in Paris, we jumped at the chance to combine a visit to them with a celebration of Emma's "Sweet Sixteen". For the last few weeks, Emma and I have been planning our itinerary and making our list of must-dos, and at last it was time to start crossing them off our list!
At the top of Emma's list was a climb up the towers of the Cathédrale Notre Dame. On Emma's first visit to Paris, the towers were closed because of a labor strike, and last year they were closed because of the post-Charlie Hebdo vigipirate system. This time, they were open, though we did have to stand in line in the rain for about an hour before we were allowed to ascend the steps. The climb wasn't bad, and the views were beautiful. Emma enjoyed framing photos of Paris with the gargoyles atop the towers with her phone camera. We also made a quick visit to Sainte-Chapelle while we were in the same area. This wasn't on Emma's list, but I didn't think it was right to allow her to visit Paris three times without seeing it. That chapel, built by King Louis IX to house his collection of Passion relics, is a stunning building, but to me requires a good bit of research before a visit to appreciate it appropriately. We bought a small guide book as we entered and that allowed us to "read along" with the stained glass windows as they moved from the creation story to Revelations, but we still couldn't do such a grand building justice with a short visit. That one will go back on my list-for-next-time!
Emma had also requested that we do a fair bit of shopping on this trip. She prefers the big French retail clothing shops along the Rue de Rivoli like Promod and Pimkie, while I like the small places in the Marais. We spent Sunday afternoon browsing in the Marais, but so did 75% of the population of Paris, so it was a bit crowded and didn't turn out to be as relaxing and leisurely as we had hoped. Our friends, with whom we were staying, did take us into Mariage Frères in the Marais, an amazing gem of a tea shop that I had always wanted to visit but was too intimidated to attempt. My friend had been there before, and as a result she just breezed in, approached the counter with confidence and started a conversation with the monsieur in the formal white apron. After a brief consultation, he began to open the various large, black bins of tea, cocked them towards her and waved his hand over the top to push some of the scent from the tea towards her for her approval. It was the most grand production I have ever seen over a product that was going to cost about €9 in the end!
We also stopped into a shop called Merci, which was one of those designer housewares/clothes/book/garden/furniture shops that offers exceptionally well-curated and high end products for sale, and gives most of the profits back to a charity. It's clearly run by someone with impeccable taste and deep pockets...I can't imagine how they can pay the rent on their three-story double-storefront shop in the heart of the Marais, let alone return the profits to charity, if they didn't have some kind of substantial funding somewhere in the background. Though we were unlikely to buy anything, we still had a grand time shopping. I was tempted by a unique gardening implement that looked like a hand-forged spork, but couldn't justify the €60 price for what amounted to a small shovel. Still, it was lovely. The entire shop was a gem, and I'm also putting it at the top of my list for subsequent return trips to Paris, if only to have the chance to order a café allongé in their elegant book space (below).
We also managed to get in some seriously wonderful food shopping on this trip. Our friends took us to a lovely fromagerie that was literally steps away from their apartment on the Rue de Bretagne, and there we ordered some petits ronds de chèvre and tried, for the first time, a life-changing Comté. We consumed every inch of it, along with a fresh baguette traditione and some clementines, sitting on a park bench at the nearby Square du Temple. Later, the daughter convinced her mother to take us to Aux Merveilleux, a glitzy pastry shop filled with decadent little puffs called merveilleux and recognizable for the line that flows out the door all day long. Here, we chose between mounds of meringue merveilleux with names like l'incroyable (meringue and cream on speculoos biscuit with shaved white chocolate on top), le magnifique (same, but with praline cream topped with carmelized hazelnut) and l'excentrique (cherry whipped cream coated with crystallized cherry meringue). I had the original merveilleux, but it was still vraiment magnifique!
Emma's list also included a stop at the famous Shakespeare and Company English-language bookshop along the Seine, which we did. We actually spent several hours here, but she just couldn't find a book that she wanted. When you buy a book here, they stamp it with the Shakespeare and Company logo, and I think she just couldn't settle on a book that was stamp-worthy enough! We did also visit the bookstore in the BHV department store, and there she did find a vegan cookbook to bring back to her French teacher back home. I found a few books that were tempting as well, but for me nothing was worth the weight of adding another book to our return luggage.
Since my friend and I are avid gardeners, we did manage to sneak in a few garden stops as well. She knew some wonderful spots that were hidden away in obscure corners of the Marais, and since my last two trips to Paris have been in January, it was lovely to be able to see gardens with something in bloom. The Jardin de Luxembourg was a special treat, as it was full of tulips and other spring-flowering bulbs. Since Hamilton has a worrysome number of deer living in close proximity to my gardens, the tulip is a long-forgotten treat for me, and I fully enjoyed browsing the tulip beds and taking lots and lots of photos!
Emma wasn't terribly interested in the gardens, but she WAS very excited to return to Versailles. This is, of course, a gardener's dream, but Emma was more interested in seeing some of the ancillary buildings on the estate that we hadn't seen before, including the Grand and Petit Trianon. These were small chateaux built at one side of the estate by Louis XV for his mistresses. The Petit Trianon was given, by Louis XV's grandson Louix XVI, to his bride Marie Antoinette. Marie apparently escaped to the Petit Trianon to hide from the responsibilities of being a queen, but even that didn't offer enough of a reprise from formal court life. So, she ordered up the construction of a hamlet next door, complete with a mill, a dairy, a farm, and a meadow with a lake in the middle. The main house was covered in scaffolding during our visit, as it is undergoing restoration, but the rest of the hamlet offers a lovely place to stroll. We toured both Trianons and their substantial gardens, along with the hamlet in its entirety.
We also crossed off another item on Emma's list by renting bikes, and we used those to tour the impressive grounds of the entire grounds of the Versailles chateau. It's an enormous place, and not too many visitors are able to make it too far past the start of the Grand Canal, so we had most of the place to ourselves as we rode. Emma was in heaven!
While we were at the Grand Canal, we stopped for a quick lunch at a canal-size cafe. We ordered salads and pizzas, and were enjoying the view of families rowing boats on the canal, when a très French woman sat down next to us with a little terrier dog in tow. A waiter hurried over to the woman, and she had a short conversation with him, then sat back to enjoy the sunshine, paying no mind to her dog. The dog was a bit agitated, and started to bark at the other diners around him. She ignored him, and when he got too loud she gave him a quick jerk on his leash and hissed "tais-toi!" My friend turned to me and expressed dismay that the French don't seem to give their dogs any water when they are in public. She was concerned that the dog was thirsty, sitting in the sun, and I could tell that she wanted to fill up the little glass ashtray on our table and hand it over to him. To avoid giving offense to the woman, however, she forced herself not to intervene. So, we continued to sit there and eat our lunch in silence as the dog's barks turned to wimpers. At last, she said, "I can't take it anymore!" just as the dog's leash became intertwined in the chair legs next to him. My friend jumped up at the same time that neighboring diners also decided to intervene, and as a team they managed to untangle the dog. The dog owner leaned forward and gave them her thanks, and that was encouragement enough for my friend, who filled the ashtray with water and put it on the floor next to the dog. At that exact moment, however, the waiter arrived with a large plate filled with a frothy, cream-topped pastry, along with a second plate that was empty. As my friend watched, the woman cut the pastry in half, slid part of it over to the empty plate, and presented it to her dog. The dog, ignoring the ashtray of water, dove nose-first into the mound of cream. My friend quickly sat down, leaned over, and whispered, "Well, now we know that Parisian dogs aren't deprived after all...and we also know why French women don't get fat!"
All in all, it was a lovely trip to Paris, and I'm so pleased that Emma now has such memories of her 16th birthday. I'm hoping that it will instill in her a life-long love of the city of Paris...if only to ensure that I have someone to bring along with me who loves the city as much as I do on future visits. And, if nothing else, perhaps it will entice her to stick with studying French for just a bit longer!
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