Parisian Palettes
Proust or Charlus?
Paris existed first in my imagination. I’d gotten to know it through media, wandering its streets in The Greater Journey, taking leaps of faith in Assassin’s Creed, and lounging in its salons in The Guermantes Way. Flying to visit Paris for the first time, I felt that what comes next would be an extension of the stories I’d already known. Yet the question still remained: which character would I play?
The two roles that my wife Corey & I found ourselves adopting were inspired by two paintings right next to each other in the Musée d'Orsay: Marcel Proust and his flamboyant brainchild, the Baron de Charlus. Proust is the quiet observer who watches the world unfold around him from within his shell. Charlus is the outspoken adventurer who makes his presence felt in the room. I usually feel like more of a Proust, content to sit back and observe, whereas by this definition Corey is the consummate Charlus. But to get the most out of our experience, we each had to be willing to play both parts.
Inspired Observers
One of Rodin’s sculptures at his eponymous museum depicts the painter Jules Bastien-Lepage in action as an “inspired observer.” I joined the many Americans since the 1800s to become one of them, and just as I’d imagined, inspired observers abounded throughout Paris. We saw writers in the Musee d’Orsay & the Luxembourg Gardens, sketchers at the Pompidou & Rodin & the bank of the Seine & even the top of the Eiffel Tower, a painter at Versailles, and finally a girl sitting on the sidewalk of Rue Oberkampf near our apartment drawing caricatures on a napkin.
Technically, I’d been to Paris once before. Fresh off my high school graduation, I’d flown with my family into Charles de Gaulle where we’d taken a taxi to the Gare Saint-Lazare to catch our train to Normandy for a stay in Bayeux.
That was the extent of my Paris experience; we didn’t even see the Eiffel Tower, though I did learn what an Americano was when I’d tried to order “regular” black coffee at the train station’s Starbucks. This time around – twelve years later – the Gare Saint-Lazare crossed my path again, this time from Monet’s perspective in the Musee d’Orsay, just feet away from some of his many paintings of Water Lilies. And two days after that, I returned physically to the Gare – again for a trip to Normandy, but this time to Giverny, where we saw in-person the nympheas that had so inspired Monet.
Not every emotional journey had a physical counterpart; some lived purely in my imagination. Rather than flying to Europe like we did, imagine sailing in with the morning light, your first glimpse of land looking like the Plage à Heist. We’d enter France at the Entrée du port de la Rochelle, debarking to mount Gericault’s cheval to take us to Seurat’s Circus. Surely at a circus we could find a hot air balloon sufficient to get us a General View of Paris, and depending on where we chose to land would have our choice of a City Dance or Summer Dance. Then to cap off the night, why not a Night Party in Versailles? Perhaps we’d get to share stories of our travels in Japan with Pere Tanguy. And when we’d finally retire at night, the radiant glory of Checa’s Crépuscule would fill our dreams.
I’m not sure which is a more idealistic vision of grandeur – Checa’s Crépuscle or the Coronation of Napoleon, a painting apparently so important that it’s depicted both at the Louvre and at Versailles. But glory is fleeting. In Napoleon’s case, the glory of his Crossing the Alps gives way to the slightly-more-gritty depictions of the Battlefield of Eylau and the Bataille d’Austerlitz, the latter of which Tolstoy depicts so well in War and Peace. I’d give Leo the edge on realism as — unlike the Parisian galleries — he covers the Moscow retreat, which must have felt rather icy and forlorn.
Culinary Charlus
At a restaurant near Palais Garnier, I identified one item on the menu that didn’t have an English translation: the Andouillette. Without bothering to look it up, I attempted to order it, and both the waiter and the party seated next to us met me with a stern warning:
“Do you know what it is?”
“No”
“It’s very specific”
“Well I’m pretty open to trying new things”
“Are you sure? Most people from outside of France don’t like it”
“Yes I’m quite sure”
“So you like taking risks”
It looked just like sausage, and only after cutting it open could I recognize its unique texture. It tasted marginally better than the tripe tacos I used to eat at my local taco truck in LA, and much better than the tripe stew I’d later try in Madrid.
I again got warned when attempting to order an Asparagus Cocktail at the Moonshiner speakeasy, which we’d entered through the back of a pizza place just off the Rue de Lappe. “It’s got a very earthy, straightforward flavor,” the waitress told me, or did she say “rugged”? I couldn’t tell. It did taste a bit rugged, and as for earthy, well, I could clearly see plenty of vegetable sediment at the bottom of the drink.
I made a point to sample more traditional tastes, of course. It wasn’t always easy, as between myself and my wife I’m the only one who eats meat or drinks alcohol. At some restaurants, like Le Colimaçon, we had no problem. I could indulge in croustilles d’escargots en persillade while Corey could enjoy the soup du jour. But one night, I really wanted steak tartare and couldn’t find anywhere with good vegan options. So I dropped Corey off at a vegan burger place and went by myself to Les Philosophes where in addition to the steak tartare I munched on foie gras while sipping (gulping?) on a bottle of their cheapest red.
Speaking of traditional tastes: duck confit at our neighborhood bistrot
To me, sampling traditional tastes in the cocktail department meant hitting the American-themed bars. At Harry’s Bar, we set next to other Americans — rather fitting for an establishment whose walls were plastered with flags of seemingly every American college (even Bates and Hofstra).
I felt obliged to order the beverages that had been invented at Harry’s, starting with the Sidecar (1921) before progressing to the Boulevardier (1927) and finally the Coronation (1937) – the last being Corey’s favorite for purely linguistic reasons. I did enjoy their “world famous hot dog,” unique though not quite at the level of a Chicago Dog.
We failed twice to get into Bar Hemingway — one of those attempts being during Paris Fashion Week when the entire Ritz was closed off — but on our third attempt we arrived just before opening and made it in among the first wave of patrons. I started with the White Normandy, heeding the waiter’s advice to drink slowly because the flavor changes as the ice melts. In-between sips I alternated snacking on olives and on their truffle-seasoned nuts.
Place Vendôme: home of the Ritz
We did a bit of people watching, entertained by a Hartford businessman trying (and failing) to pay for the drinks of the woman next to him. After she left, another woman took her place, and the game was back on. Overhearing talk of New Jersey, Corey engaged them in conversation, and by them I mean mostly the divorcee from Orange County, who happily gabbed about her late-night partying, her post-divorce move to the Hollywood Hills, and her kids’ jetsetting education, alternating between a French school in LA in the fall and a Spanish school in Valencia in the winter.
I finished with a drink created by Ernest himself, the Death in the Afternoon. Although it wasn’t made with the same type of absinthe Hemingway would have used, the waiter did remark “I hope you have a nice Death!”
“Everything in Paris is crooked”
So spoke a curly-haired blonde at the table next to us in a tiny restaurant, speaking to us and to his West Hollywood boyfriend who’d taken the chunnel train in that morning from London. “It’s not what you’d expect for such an expensive city,” he elaborated, telling more of his year studying in Paris as Corey & I waited, seemingly in vain, for our gyoza façon persil to arrive.
We had our share of crooked experiences over our five weeks in the City of Light. Plenty of places were fully or partially closed, whether due to the Olympics hangover (Tuileries garden) or preparation for Fashion Week (Rodin garden). Then there were the crowds. At least I got to view the Mona Lisa from afar, and had the chance to build some empathy for Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cara, which has the misfortune of being located on the wall opposite the world’s most famous painting.
Rather than get a subway pass, since most days we just walked places, we’d get single-ride passes every time we took the metro. One of those times, stepping off the train at our Parmentier station, I tossed mine in the trash, only to walk up the stairs and get stopped by cops demanding proof we hadn’t jumped the turnstile. They ostensibly didn’t buy my story, threatening me with a €50 fine, but eventually let Corey – not me! as they wouldn’t let me out of their sight – go down and retrieve the ticket.
Corey felt at home in Paris from our very first night, when at a neighborhood cafe she struck up a conversation with a man at the next table, the owner of a hookah lounge. Soon, free whiskey cokes—courtesy of his friendship with the cafe’s owner—arrived at our table. Our conversation was a clumsy mix of his English, my Spanish, and Corey's rapidly evolving French pronunciation (“wee” —> “way”) — plus a bit of Google Translate. After learning I work remotely, he repeatedly insisted we switch jobs and joked that when we travel to Thailand, “your wife should wear a blindfold.”
La Ville Lumière
Some moments felt right out of a novel: kissing in the rain, watching a show at Moulin Rouge, and especially our whole day visiting Versailles. We posed for pictures outside its golden gates as if regal ourselves, not far from where the ‘mechanical’ horse reposed in retirement, just two months after it had galloped down the Seine during the Olympic opening ceremonies.
While the palace itself was rather crowded – with more frustrating chokepoints than even the Louvre – the Marie Antoinette flavor of Ladurée macarons provided the pick-me-up we needed upon stepping out into the gardens.
They seemed to go on forever. While from the palace hill we could see where the Grand Canal came to an end in the distance, we encountered what felt like infinite nooks & crannies in-between; each time we turned a quarter, there was a new hidden garden – or fountain show – waiting to be found.
We must have walked 10 miles that afternoon, without even making it to Le Grand Trianon or its Jardin. To rest from all those steps we laid on the grass next to the water, gazing out at the rowboats and up at the perfectly clear blue sky, from which fall leaves spun down to lay next to us.
After a dinner of cured ham, bread, and beer in the town, we took the train back into Paris not long after sunset. As the top of the hour approached, so did the Eiffel Tower, so we hopped off two stops early and wove through the crowd to find a private viewing point on a partition in the middle of the Quai Jaques Chirac just as the tower started to sparkle.
Thank you for reading! Up next I’ll dive into the five weeks we spent living in Madrid.
