1) I slept heavily, but woke earlier than I wanted to, well before 6. But about 6:15 I started the day with my pages, showered, dressed, brought my luggage to store to the front desk, breakfasted at the hotel (for simplicity’s sake), wrote some in my room, and then gathered my three bags and headed to St. Pancras Station.
1a) It was only a couple blocks away, but I felt like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, the sidewalks were so crowded.
1b) Just as “ballet parking” for valet parking and “carrion bag” for carryon bag, so is “St. Pancreas” for St. Pancras. Stop it.
2) After a wee panic about my ticket, the Nice Frenchman pointed me toward security. Surprise, a metal detector! But at least I didn’t have to remove my shoes or my laptop. Unaccountably three young Japanese people were engaged in confused hesitation at the luggage screening. Was the operator having a problem? Were they unclear on the concept? Was this performance art? Someone on the staff finally came forward and jumpstarted them all again, and that was that.
2a) The station was crowded, so I was glad I had splurged on first class and could go to the premiere lounge (or whatever they called it) — which was just as crowded. I found a place to light and did my best to write, but it was not easy to concentrate.
3) Finalment, my train was called. In New York, they give first class a head start to the gate, but not at St. Pancras. I walked out of the lounge and was immediately part of the rat race up the flat escalator.
3a) And we were all packed on that thing, too, which made it urgent when the party of three ahead of me got off the escalator and just stood there with their bags. Somehow I got around them, but come on people — keep it moving!
Safely in my seat before departure.
3b) My car was at the extreme end of the platform, and after a wee panic about the seat numbers (they seemed to skip around a bit), I got settled in my correct seat. Ten or 15 minutes later, voilá, we were en route!
4) I had a single seat with a pull down tray for my laptop. Quite soon we were offered pouches with rolled-up moist towelettes. I was then offered a (stemless) glass of a delightful dry Champagne. Before long, lunch was served: chicken with some lovely little bits, cheese and compote, and a sweet little honey cheesecake thingy. And another glass of that excellent Champagne, all followed by coffee.
4a) The coffee service quite impressed me. The attendant came by with a coffee pot in one hand and a tray with a milk pitcher and a sugar bowl on it. He directed me to put my coffee cup on his tray so he could pour the coffee; I then retrieved it, added milk, took a sugar packet, and we were off to the races. And all this on a moving train!
4b) By the time I had finished lunch, I was surprised to realize that we had cleared the Chunnel and were now in France.
4c) Most of the journey was accompanied by the (mostly) harmless prattle of a little boy, maybe about three or four years old, two rows ahead of me with his mother. You notice things, you notice they bother you, and then suddenly you notice that they aren’t happening any more.
5) And then . . . bienvenue Gare du Nord! I couldn’t believe we were here already! And I spent a period of anxiety about getting to my hotel. I needed euros just in case the taxis didn’t take cards (you never know). Then, after finally finding an ATM, I only had €50s, and needed to find something to buy to make change. (That’s how I ended up with two chocolate bars.) And then where were the taxis?
5a) I got into what turned out to be a long and almost interminable taxi line, which confirmed that a) I no longer spoke the dominant language, b) it was hot in Paris and I was wearing my dark suit, and c) even if I was in the long line with no end in sight, I was in Paris.
5b) About 15 minutes in I ended up talking with the lady ahead of me, a Californian with a British accent traveling with her daughter, and that helped the time pass.
5c) “The darkest hour is before the dawn,” and I was at my most anxious when I was two cabs away from my own. Mother would have said “This is an opportunity to practice patience.”
6) But at last I was in a taxi, and actually making sense in French! “J’ai attendu une heure complet pour le taxi!” And later “Je me suis trompé appeler l’hotel ‘L’Hotel Pigalle.’ C’est jusqu’ ‘Le Pigalle.’” (“Je me suis trompé” is one of the things Mr. Ratchett said that fatal night on the Orient Express, which is the only reason I know that sentence.)
6a) The cabby very efficiently got me to my hotel, helped with my large suitcase, and confirmed the stereotype of Parisian cabbies as dishonest by shortchanging me €5. La plus ça change . . . to which Lauren Bacall in How to Marry a Millionaire would respond “Gesundheit.” No, he didn’t have a card reader in the taxi.
7) I was then standing immediately before a friendly open-faced man at a large red-brown marble table in a long room part café, part lounge, part hotel office. Happily he spoke English, and immediately introduced me to his trainee (sadly I have forgotten her name already), who would be observing my registration. But first, would I like anything to drink? Sparkling water, merci bien.
7a) Now invariably when I arrive at a hotel I want to be handed my key and go up to my room that very minute. And you know and I know that that is not the way things work any more, but it look less than ten minutes. I was given my key fob, instructed on the use of the elevator, and soon I was two floors up, lumbering into a quirky small room done in neutrals.
7b) I unpacked at once, and realized I was definitely in France because the toilet was in its own little room by the door, and the rest of the bathroom was as far away as possible from the toilet, next to my bed. The closet also doubles as the in-room bar, which meant I had to hang my suits with trousers full length on the bathroom towel hooks. (My seersucker suit looks quite wrinkled after three weeks in a suitcase, but I will trot it out tomorrow.)
8) I had to have some sleep, but after about half an hour I realized I ought to get up and into the city. So I put on some shorts and a T-shirt (too cold for that in England), and headed off to the Galeries Lafayette, 20 minutes on foot. Passing through the lobby, the Nice Man asked if everything was all right and I replied “Je suis contente,” which I know from Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête. He corrected me gently to use the masculine, “content.”
8a) My hotel is just off the Place Pigalle, so Sacré Coeur is visible at the intersection. I made a hairpin turn to the left, and proceeded down one of those residential Parisian streets with very narrow sidewalks, narrower sidewalk cafés, and a few too many people. I was surprised to find myself walking by Rue La Bruyere only because Charles Boyer mentions it to Hedy Lamarr in Algiers.
La Rotonde!
8b) Coming into a little, very active square, I was surprised to discover a café with a name I recognized: La Rotonde. Could that be the La Rotonde, Hemingway’s?! Didn’t I go there with Akeena back in 2008? Or was that 2011? And wait a minute, wasn’t that on the Right Bank? I filed it away for future reference and kept on.
8c) Approaching the Galeries Lafayette, I witnessed an altercation in the bike lane between three Frenchman, one of them outraged that the other two were going the wrong way or something. It was clear that they were all locals; he wasn’t flaming tourists with no clue.
They’ve added an observation platform — terrifying.
9) Finally in the store, I realized how rare it is that I actually shop like this, in the big stores. In part because the sales staff have you under surveillance. (The saleslady in Lisbon last year was even worse.) I picked up a couple (needed) pairs of dress socks and went on my way . . .
10) . . . back to La Rotonde. It was the perfect place for a first-night dinner in Paris, not least because of the volume of people milling around on this hot sunny early evening. I settled down to a proper kir (white wine and cassis, not a Royale, which is champagne and Chambord), a chicken cutlet Milanese with a glass of rosé, and then crepes La Bretonne and another rosé.
10a) The energy of Paris on this day: the heat, the disco music, the many many many people, the brasserie menu.
11) And then I retraced my steps back to my hotel, returned to my room, forgot all about my chocolate bars, and wrote. Now, what will I do tomorrow?