ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER
Breaking the code
Raffaella Barker discovers Paris through the eyes of a child Tra la la. Paris in springtime. I am on a jaunt with my daughter Esme as a treat to mark her ninth birthday. On the way we have to turn a blind eye to the absurd Da Vinci Code vulgarisation of the world now. The Eurostar trains are decorated with nonsense signifying nothing but reminiscent of the book graphics and the film trailer colours and even the Eurostar platforms. Pausing to do up her shoelace at Gard du Nord, Esme gazes at a piece of Da Vinci Code jigsaw puzzle stencilled into the concrete and rolls her eyes. ‘There are other films it would be nicer to see on the floor,’ she says, with the icy contempt of the commercially innocent. Absolutely perfect, therefore, to come out of the Metro at St Germain du Pres and almost stand on Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly beautifully coloured in by a pavement artist.
We are staying at Hôtel d’Angleterre in Rue Jacob, a mere cupcake’s throw from everything famous and lovely and Left Bank. The hotel is gratifyingly old style Parisian dark wood panelling in the foyer, padded walls ‘a bit like quilts’ in the bedroom, and no Sky TV. This bit is particularly pleasing to me, as even when Esme is watching cartoons, she is watching them in French. They must be more stimulating in French. Isn’t everything? Once the British Embassy, and also a bolt hole for Hemingway, Hotel d’Angleterre is discreet, and ordinary in the nicest possible way. It would be perfect for an affair, though I did see a man reading a book called A Guide to the Misery of Sex in the bar. But maybe he was deliberately trying to make himself feel guilty. Catholic probably. Oh God, Da Vinci Code rubbish creeping in again.
A beautiful morning, lime trees pluming like blurred green paintbrushes along La Seine, dipping and whispering in the wind, which whips up our skirts hilariously. Coming up the steps to walk to Champ de Mars for our first bit of bona fide sight seeing, I wait for Esme to catch sight of the Eiffel Tower. There is something completely adorable about her inquisitive gaze, sweeping across the road and up the buildings, and her delight when she twirls around to find the familiar spire looming silent behind her. Like Alice’s Cheshire Cat, the tower follows us through the morning, vying for attention when we are admiring a curvy art deco house in Rue du Champ de Mars on the way to lunch at the Café du Marche in Rue Cler. This is proper Paris, light years from The Da Vinci Code. The man next to us at lunch orders steak tartare and eats it while smoking a chain of untipped cigarettes and drinking a carafe of red wine. It is midday. This is the civilisation the world is losing.
The pinnacle moment of our trip is to show Esme Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ in their new exhibition space, the restored Musée de l’Orangerie in Jardin des Tuileries, companion building to the Jeu de Paume. I have been going on about this in a smug way since first hitting on the notion of coming to Paris, and have primed Esme with a postcard. I am gratified that she remembers having seen one of the paintings somewhere before. ‘I think it was on a table mat,’ she reflects. Less gratifying, but never mind, we are about to view them and blow our minds. It is not to be. The queue stretches to the hexagonal pond. I blame The Da Vinci Code myself. And the trainspotter mentality that makes us all want to tick off the newest latest thing. Instead we see a very unsuitable exhibition by American photographer Cindy Sherman in the Jeu de Paume. Esme is superbly unmoved by it.
She is however, very much moved by Debauv & Gallais, a chocolate shop with the alchemists touch. Or rather pharmacists. Its founder, a bulimic, called Sulpice Debauve believed in chocolate as a therapy, and the interior is a blissful mix of the half moon drugstore counters familiar in the 18th century, and the frou frou gilt and mirrors that are essential for the sensual experience of consuming chocolate. From there to Laduree, a bonbon of a cake shop, and we are ramping up our taste buds. We have tea and the acclaimed pink macaroons. They are like eating pink clouds and inspire an existential conversation about famous cakes, from Proust’s madeleines to the Queen of Hearts’ jam tarts, via Marie Antionette and our current favourite website www.pimpmysnack.com. This is what Paris does best. It reminds us how to talk to one another. And not about The Da Vinci Code.
Hôtel d’Angleterre, 44 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris. Tel. +33(0)1 42 60 34 72; Fax +33 (0)1 42 60 16 93.
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