As I write this entry, I’m sitting in a café in Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris. It’s one of the worst, most poorly organized airports in the world, but goddammit if their airport café doesn’t serve a perfect pain au chocolat!
Why would I be having breakfast at the airport after braving a transatlantic flight? Because I’m killing time. My flight arrived at 5:30 am Paris time, and I can’t check in to my AirBNB until 10 am. Rather than wandering the streets while dragging two suitcases, I’ve opted to kill some hours in the airport.
The sun is slowly rising over the airport terminal across the way, and I’m about to begin what I hope will be a glorious six weeks in gay Paris—all the gayer for my presence.
It’s kind of a miracle that I ended up here. I’m no longer a religious person, but some part of me still believes—or at least wants to believe—the theology espoused in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. I read it decades ago, but the central message stuck: the idea that the universe somehow and ultimately conspires for each of our happiness. Easy to say for someone with my life, I know, but it’s a beautiful idea, and I personally (and thankfully) have no evidence to the contrary.
Last November, Tibi and I decided to spend Thanksgiving in Paris. It had been a stressful period, and we wanted a break somewhere beautiful with good food. Since my first solo trip to Paris, I’ve been in love with Île Saint-Louis, the smaller and quieter of the two islands in the middle of the River Seine, smack dab in the center of Paris. When Tibi and I found photos of a spectacular apartment on the top floor of a building in the middle of the island, then, we snapped it up. The photos showed a newly renovated, light-filled dream of a pied-a-terre, and the description on Booking.com spoke of chicness and luxury. Naturally, we immediately paid the full, non-refundable amount, along with a security deposit of an extra 800 euros.
We arrived in Paris the Sunday before Thanksgiving and followed the directions from the landlord to a café where we retrieved the key, then to the apartment itself. We hauled our bags up the four flights of ancient stairs, unlocked the apartment door, and entered into a place that looked nothing at all like the photos from the Booking.com site. Light-filled, luxurious, and chic this was not. The apartment we entered had little sunlight to speak of, but instead a random assortment of bare bulbs of various hues screwed into the wall sconces. The walls themselves were crack-riddled, and the furniture was old and broken. The kitchen stove and bathtub were stained, and the toilet was located in a tight closet space with a dirty mop and bucket alongside it.
I pulled up the listing from Booking.com as a point of comparison. Could I have misremembered this badly? Were the photos actually not as beautiful as I thought? But when the webpage loaded, the 40+ photos that were there when we booked the place had all been erased and replaced by a single image: a cartoon drawing of the Eiffel Tower (which, by the way, is at least an hour’s walk from the apartment).
We were devastated, but still tried to convince ourselves that we could maybe make this work. It was only a week, after all. And so we left our things in the horrid hovel and walked a block away to a little bistro we knew (Le Saint-Régis, FEAST Score: 50 - Go If You Can), right next to the bridge that connects Île Saint-Louis to Île de-la-Cité, with Notre Dame and its flying buttresses in full view. A table wasn’t immediately available, so we sat at the bar and enjoyed a glass of champagne while we waited. Once we were seated, we ordered escargots de Bourgogne to start. The server brought us a plate of these gorgeous snails cooked in their shells, each bursting with butter and parsley and garlic. I put one in my mouth, and all of my frustrations about the terrible apartment started to dissipate. And whatever anxiety was left after I finished the snails was completely obliterated by the duck confit I had after it. I was tired and annoyed, but the moment I took a bite of the crispy-sweet duck leg, which literally melted in my mouth, tears came to my eyes. For real. Proust had his madeleine, but the duck confit, for me, unleashed within me a wave of emotions and memories, and I was just ecstatic. We made the decision, then and there, that this would be a week of joy and nothing else. And that meant finding another place to stay, even if it meant throwing away the money we’d been scammed out of.
We returned to the apartment and called the number the landlord had provided us. No one answered. We tried Booking.com, and they were of very little help, as they wouldn’t do anything without speaking to the owner. Although we received no reassurance at all that our money would be refunded, we knew that we simply couldn’t spend a week in this horrible place. We found a hotel about 15 minutes away that wasn’t too terribly expensive, booked it, and left the apartment. The new hotel room was small, to be sure, but it was clean, beautifully appointed, and perfectly located. From that moment on, the foundation was laid for a perfect week.
We spent the next seven days in almost complete bliss, gorging ourselves on the most fantastic food and wine. We had a few work meetings scheduled, but in between those meetings and our meals, we walked the city streets, admiring the sublime beauty of Paris’s buildings and parks. We returned to two restaurants, in particular, that have now become two of our very favorite in the world.
L’Avant Comptoir du Marché (FEAST Score: 54 – Must Go) is a completely unpretentious dining spot in the corner of the old market near Boulevard Saint-Germain. The friendly woman at the counter inside where you order recommended the most delicious French Malbec, which we drank with pleasure at a high-top table under the colonnade outside. The menu is filled with an assortment of absolutely delicious tapas-style delights. The ham croquettes, pork belly roasted in honey, and lard mini-sandwich were stand-outs. And for dessert we ate this butter-drenched masterpiece of a pastry from Brittany that blew our minds.
But our favorite place, I think, was a small neighborhood restaurant in the residential part of Montmartre called Le Bon, La Butte (FEAST Score: 51: Must Go). There’s nothing fancy at all about the place, but the food was simply perfect. I’ve never particularly liked foie gras, but at this place, they infuse it with jasmine tea and sakura flowers, and it was just spectacular. The steak au poivre was a perfect version of the French classic, and the tarte au pommes was the best version of that dessert I’ve ever tasted. We loved it so much that we went twice in the week…and I already have two reservations made for our first week back in Paris, including for Easter dinner next Sunday.
By the end of the week, I felt so relaxed and refreshed, I really had no desire to return home. I wanted to stay in Paris forever. The weight of anxiety I feel on a daily basis back home was completely lifted in Paris. I told Tibi that I wanted more than anything to find a way to come back for longer.
I thought that may have to wait until my first sabbatical, but then, several weeks later, I received a phone call from a women working for the Fulbright program at the US State Department. She told me that UNESCO was looking for someone to help them revamp their approach to Holocaust and Genocide Education worldwide and wanted to know if I was interested. It would mean moving to Paris for six weeks to work in the UNESCO headquarters. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like fate…like the universe was, indeed, conspiring for my happiness. Not only would I get to spend six weeks in Paris, but US taxpayers would pay for me to do it. (Please, nobody tell Elon Musk!)
There was a moment when I thought it was all going to fall apart. The entire Fulbright staff was furloughed in early March, and it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. Somehow, however, this program was deemed a priority, and my fellowship was reinstated. As a result, I’m now here in this beautiful city. And, to top it all off, last week we found out that, after a protracted dispute process with our credit card company, we finally proved that we were scammed, and the money from that terrible apartment was completely refunded to us. Cue the Edith Piaf, please, because ma vie en rose is certainly in full swing. I’m thrilled to discover what the next six weeks have in store. But if the pain au chocolate that I’ve eaten for breakfast at the airport café is any indication, I’m in for a treat.
Full tears. This was beautiful and makes my heart burst. Cannot wait to read more about your six weeks.