My first proper visit to Paris entailed a visit to a sex shop whilst en route to Brive to play rugby as a 17 year old. We didn’t have sex shops in Dorchester in those days so upon the first sight of one we headed straight in…and straight out again in embarrassment. As grammar school boarders we barely knew what sex was anyway but we did know that the French were more open about this than repressed Britain. I think around 1974 Britain had just joined the Common Market as our economy was in such dire straits that we would have joined any market. Looking back on it some 50 years later it didn’t go so well for Britain in Europe and it has taken 50 years to realise how un-European Britain is. Who can forget the great headline in The Sun ( a UK tabloid newspaper) saying Up Yours Delors (Jacques Delors was the incumbent president of Europe).
Anyway the visit to the sex shop resulted in far too much Ricard being drunk to get over the embarrassment of the whole episode and we boarded the train for Brive much the worse for wear and with empty pockets given the Parisian prices. I didn’t go back for a few years until my girlfriend at university was working in Paris for the Dreyfus family as an au pair. She had a lovely room in the staff quarters in their apartment near Parc Monceau and they very kindly put me in an adjoining room with a connecting door. How very French. The boat train from London was the best way to get to Paris in those days so it was London to Dover, get on the ferry at a horrible hour, then back on the train in Calais for a 5 hour trip. To this day I remember the carriage that I was in from Calais with a retired teacher, a violinist, a lady from Iran and me. We seemed to discuss absolutely everything and from that day onwards I was hooked on the romance of train travel. It is of course a very different journey now - 2 hours from London to Paris through the tunnel and barely a word spoken. There is much talk of train travel returning throughout Europe but with flights so cheap train travel is very much the preserve of the cash rich and time rich. More and more overnight services are being rolled out but the prices may never approach the small change that Ryanair charge to cover the same distance. How do governments fix this?
So, back to chez Dreyfus and Paris in the 70s. It’s where I learnt to rock and roll. Dance clubs were everywhere and seemingly unaffected by the contemporary US/ British rock scene. I have always thought that French music is more about dancing than listening. It’s more tactile. It is of course more about love and loss and doesn’t always travel well beyond French speaking countries. Paris was wonderful and left an indelible impression on me such that 25 years later I thought it would be a grand idea to buy an apartment in the city. €60,000 (or 500,000 French Francs as it was in 2001) wouldn’t get you much in London or anywhere else but in Paris it got you a studio flat in the 3rd arrondissement, so very central if tiny. A single room with a kitchenette and a separate bathroom all overlooking the courtyard. It was wonderful but boy was it time consuming. The tragedy of 9/11 happened weeks afterwards so all Americans stopped travelling. There was no Airbnb to rely on - and the lift kept on breaking down and demanding money. It seemed my only trips were in between tenants to tidy up and continue my correspondence with the local tax authorities. Plus ça change. Moving in over a hot August weekend led to my finding a fabulous Cuban dance hall somewhere near Place Republique and being reminded of those heady 70s days. The whole ‘Marais’ area was coming alive with street markets, new restaurants opening, old favourites closing down, the fabulous Arts et Metier Metro station, internet cafes opening up so that we could stay connected…It is a very different and vastly more expensive place these days. Sadly I sold up some 10 years ago and regret it every day.
Paris always seemed to be easier to get around than London. It didn’t seem so big and the descent to the Metro was a few steps rather than the lengthy escalator rides down to the tube in London, so you were in and out so much more quickly - and still are. Local restaurants were great value with the Menu du Jour - apart from L’Ami Louis, the most expensive chicken restaurant in the world around the corner from my flat. Jacques Chirac took Ronald Reagan there for dinner but I have only ever peered over the net curtains. It seems a place for very secret chickens. I didn’t ever really need to stay at my flat because during this time I was dealing with the very best hotels in Paris and they always seemed keen for me to stay - so given a choice between a sofa bed in the Marais and a suite at the Bristol or the George V there wasn’t much deliberation. The Park Hyatt opened. le Meurice was fabulous and Le Crillon an institution. I took both my god daughters to Paris on their 16th birthdays and let me tell you that as a then 50 year old man this is viewed very differently in Paris than anywhere else in the world. Yes of course she is your god daughter Mr Bolding - wink wink. Kate W and I checked into a huge suite with 2 rooms and I large double bed. The front desk took some convincing. It happened to be February 14th so a cacophony of car horns greeted us wherever we went.
Lucy G and I stayed in a duplex suite at the George V so at least they had read and understood the memo. This hotel is still the scene of many memories and regrets for me. Standing next to Mick Jagger in the lobby and having no idea what to say to him and to sound remarkably nonchalant. Being in the same lift as George Michael and spluttering something as he stepped out the doors into the lobby. Both musical heroes of mine. Driving up to the entrance with my young kids in a battered Honda Accord to be greeted by hordes of people and a doorman eager to park the worst and most untidy car he had ever seen. Then out of the lobby walk Bruce Springsteen and Serena Williams as I step out of the Honda.
When the George V was voted The Worlds Best Hotel by readers of institutional Investor I knew that my resulting celebratory dinner with the General Manager was going to be one of the culinary highlights of my life. Indeed it was - the restaurant Le Cinq is really as good as it gets - but to fully enjoy it I thought that the night before I should go to the worst ‘restaurant’ in Paris so that I could duly compare both experiences. So on a cold December night I descended into the bowels of Les Halles - a rather horrible 70s concept that replaced the old original lovely market. 5 floors down you have the Metro station and nearby, yes, sex shops and a Macdonalds. So I went there for a Big Mac. I tried to relate this story over dinner at Le Cinq the following evening and when I asked Didier where he thought I might have gone to experience the worst of French cuisine he replied that it was probably the coffee shop at the nearby Sheraton. I think I left it at that to save further embarrassment.
Didier asked me to say a few words at the next days lunch that was being held in anticipation of Paris being awarded the 2012 Olympics. Famously they didn’t get it and London did although the 5 rings finally arrive back in Paris in 2024. I said that a really great hotel must create a sense of arrival for the guest whilst not appearing too intimidating. This is difficult to get right as gone are the days when you could tell the measure of a person by their dress sense. The George V did get it spot on - you walked into the lobby, even stepping out of a Honda Accord with 2 kids, and the hotel still treated you like Bruce Springsteen. The Bristol is the same. And a sense of arrival is so important because whilst hoteliers obsess with the quality of the rooms and the thread count of the sheets we as guests are more concerned with making memories. Experiencing the city through the eyes of a wonderful hotel. Stuff happens in hotels so let’s leave it at that. If the arrival doesn’t go well then the rest of the stay seems to slip from one complaint to another. If it goes well and you are ushered seemlessly to Suite 101 then the rest of your stay is a dreamy high thread count of interwoven memories.
But I will finish this story with a sense of departure. On the same Honda Accord trip we were checking out and Didier’s assistant Yves was there to send us on our way. As is normal the question was asked ‘Anything from the mini bar sir?’ Now we were staying in 2 wonderful suites and I hadn’t seen much of my daughter who must remain nameless but let’s call her Nathalie and her pal Caz. Both were about 14 and were having a blast in their own suite. So much so that they thought it might be a good idea to drink the 6 mini vodka bottles in the mini bar and replace them with water - the hotel will never know but of course the automatic sensor in the fridge obviously did. They hadn’t emerged when we were checking out as they claimed they were packing whereas in reality they were cleaning up the contents of their stomach from the carpet. Back to the front desk and the answer to the question was ‘No - nothing’. Really sir - it looks like 6 bottles of vodka at a cost of €240. I instantly spotted Nathalie cowering behind a plant on the other side of the lobby. At which point Yves stepped in with a hand on my shoulder saying ‘Nigel - you go - I’ve got this. It’s obviously an error on our part’ - knowing full well it absolutely wasn’t but he had read the room/lobby perfectly. Now, that is a sense of departure.
Suffice to say it was an interesting and tense ride back to Surrey in the Honda Accord. Nathalie had ‘previous’ in this area after mini bar convictions in Bangkok and Sydney when entire supplies of M&Ms had been consumed, so this was merely an expensive upgrade. It took us a few weeks but we got over it…then one morning she and Caz appeared in the lounge wearing George V bathrobes. To be continued!
A BOLDER PARIS LIST - 10 really cool things to do in Paris.
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