Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [202]
A Paris Afternoon
“No matter how many times you go to Paris, there is always something new to discover and savor. My husband, Lester, and I have been to Paris twenty, maybe twenty-five, times since our first visit in 1959. We often go during the last week in May to catch the first few days of the grand-slam French Open at Roland Garros stadium in the Bois de Boulogne. Last year, the two days we had tickets to the tennis tournament were broiling hot the first day and cold and rainy the second day. The next day we woke up to sunny blue skies. I felt like doing something outdoors and something that wouldn’t require much energy—I was still a little jet-lagged and feeling a bit under the weather. We decided to have a picnic on the Seine and just take it easy.
“We picked up a couple of ham and Gruyère sandwiches on baguettes, some fresh apricots and cherries, and a bottle of water near our hotel in the Marais. We contemplated buying a bottle of wine but decided it wouldn’t be a good idea with a Paris Opéra performance on the agenda for seven that evening. It was a short walk to the Île Saint-Louis and across to the Right Bank on the Pont de la Tournelle, from which the rear view of Notre-Dame with its magnificent flying buttresses and slender spire is one of my favorite sights in Paris.
“At the bottom of the ancient stone stair we walked along the river path in the direction of the next bridge, Pont de Sully, until we saw a grassy green knoll under a tree next to the retaining wall. We settled down there and had our picnic as we watched the Bateaux-Mouches and the working barges sail by, so close you felt like you could almost touch them. Suddenly two models, a bride and a groom, and a photographer with two assistants and various photographic equipment emerged from under the bridge and began posing and shooting the models with Notre-Dame in the background. They appeared to be Japanese, so we assumed the shoot was for a Japanese magazine. Then two young Parisians strolled by and stopped, as if on cue by the late street photographer Robert Doisneau, to entertain us with a passionate kiss. Meanwhile, as the afternoon wore on, our grassy picnic spot began attracting more than just us: A young woman reclined, I thought to take a nap, but she proceeded to carry on a long cell phone conversation, punctuated with many interjections of “Mais oui.” A family with a little boy made bubbles with a “magic” wand. A man arrived on his bicycle with a trumpet that he proceeded to play—jazz—and apparently for his own enjoyment, as when he finished he cycled off without passing his hat. A large family spread out their mouthwatering picnic treats on a stone bench and proceeded to gesticulate, shout, and eat all at once—no small feat. An elderly couple’s cocker spaniel found our tree especially attractive.
“Eventually I opened the International Herald Tribune and began doing the crossword puzzle, until I dozed off. When I woke, we strolled back to our hotel feeling we had just experienced a wonderful afternoon. And it was absolutely free.”
—Janet Schulman, former editor at large, Random House Children’s Books, and former publisher, Random House and Knopf Books for Young Readers
RECOMMENDED READING
Coming Down the Seine, Robert Gibbings (Dutton, 1953; Interlink, 2003). First published in 1953, this new edition includes Gibbings’s original black-and-white engravings of Seine scenes. This is noteworthy since “however good his writing was, Robert Gibbings was primarly an artist and he attached equal importance to the wood-engraved illustrations in his books,” Martin Andrews informs us in the 2003 foreword. Andrews believes Gibbings’s love for la France profonde—the France of small villages, cafés, and good food—“will be shared by many modern-day readers,