Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [260]
Photo Credit bm1.12
One Hollins Abroader, Susan Gilbert Harvey, was inspired to pen a book weaving her own experience with that of her great-aunt, who lived in Paris in 1898. Tea With Sister Anna: A Paris Journal (Golden Apple, 2005) reveals the life Anna McNulty Lester led in Paris as an art student, which Harvey, also an artist, pieced together from letters she’d discovered in her great-aunt’s steamer trunk. In her preface, Harvey says she admired her great-aunt’s talent and tenacity, and enjoyed walking her streets in Paris, but she was surprised to find such passion in her great-aunt’s solitary life. It was a simple typed quotation she’d come across in one letter that encouraged her to investigate Aunt Anna’s sojourn and to examine her own life as an artist: “Let us hang our life on the line, as painters say, and look at it honestly.” On the final page of the book, Harvey writes, “When I first read these words, I pictured a clothesline art display. Now I know that ‘on the line’ means hung at eye level, the most prestigious position for a painting in the Salon.”
When I attended the fifty-year reunion of HAP, I met some other women who also lived in New York, and we had such a great time together that we now meet several times a year for a French-themed fête. As a group we are of varying ages and, with two exceptions, we all attended HAP in different years. But what doesn’t vary is our conviction that our time in Paris irrevocably changed our lives. For this edition I asked mes amies de New York to share some of their memories and favorite things about Paris, and they were, naturellement, only too happy to comply:
There is nothing like Paris at twilight. Enough daylight remains to allow the city’s architecture to be admired in all its glory, but the exteriors now share center stage with glowing interiors. There’s a fabulous juxtaposition of centuries-old structures and illuminated contemporary life. This contrast excites the eye—and makes the heart beat a bit faster.
—Amanda Miller, Hollins Abroad Paris, 1984; vice president and publisher, John Wiley & Sons
MY SHORT LIST OF FAVORITE THINGS TO DO IN PARIS
• Spend several hours at the Musée d’Orsay (my favorite museum in all the world).
• Have dinner at Le Grand Véfour in the Palais Royal.
• Marvel at the stained-glass windows of La Sainte-Chapelle with the sun shining in.
• Sip a café crème and people-watch at Les Deux Magots, the famous expat hangout on the Left Bank; or take afternoon tea at the century-old Angelina tearoom on rue de Rivoli.
• Stroll the Tuileries Gardens west of the Louvre.
• Have pre- or after-dinner drinks in the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz.
• Have your portrait sketched by street artists in Montmartre (and explore the neighborhood of Amélie while you’re up there).
• Wander around the Île Saint-Louis and have an ice cream at Berthillon.
• For two splendid views, climb up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe and ride the escalator to the rooftop café of the Centre Pompidou.
• Have drinks at Harry’s New York Bar (5 rue Daunou, 2ème) near the Opéra.
• Both the Musée Rodin and the Musée Marmotton are very special.
• For visitors with a sweet tooth, you can’t leave Paris without going to Ladurée (16 rue Royale, 8ème) and sampling the pastel-hued macarons—they were invented here over a century ago. My favorites are pistachio, cherry-amaretto, lily of the valley, and grenadine. With its Jules Chéret décor, this branch of Ladurée is strictly an Old World experience.
• Have a meal at the Le Jules Verne restaurant on the second étage of the Eiffel Tower—it’s open for lunch and dinner, is under the direction of Alain Ducasse, and has earned one Michelin star.
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