Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [38]
Some twenty years later, Reader, I married him. Only then did I discover John Russell’s book Paris (originally published in 1960). Here was sustained delight. No one else could combine the feel and the look, the heart and the mind, the stones and the trees, the past and the present, the wits, the eccentrics, and the geniuses of my favorite city with such easy grace.
Reading this book, for me, was like sauntering through the city where I had lived so long. By my side was a most civilized companion who casually brought all the strands together and made them gleam—not forgetting to stop for an apéritif and a delicious meal en route. The book was long out of print, and I felt it unfair to keep this to myself. I showed it to a publisher friend. He immediately agreed that others would enjoy John Russell’s Paris as much as we did. He suggested it be brought up to date, in an illustrated edition.
The author and I went to Paris to gather the illustrations. There was some confusion about our hotel reservation, and the receptionist at the Pont Royal apologized for giving us a small room on the top floor. Here the circle closes in the most satisfactory of ways: it was the identical room, no. 125, in which I had lived when I first came to Paris. The turkey-red carpet was now royal blue, the furniture was spruced-up modern, there was—is this possible?—a minibar. And there was a pushbutton telephone that clicked all of Europe and America into the streamlined receiver.
We stepped out onto the little balcony. Deyrolle the naturalist’s, where I used to buy crystals and butterflies, was still across the street. There were some new chic boutiques, but the noble eighteenth-century façades still stood guard over the past. We looked around happily: there they were, our cherished landmarks—the Invalides, the Église de Sainte-Clotilde, and the Eiffel Tower on the left, and on the right the former Gare d’Orsay, soon to be a museum of late nineteenth-century art, the Sacré-Coeur, and the Grand Palais.
The huge open sky overhead had drifted in from the Île-de-France. The bottle-green bus bumbled down the rue du Bac. The tricolor flew the way it flies in Delacroix’s Liberty Guiding the People. I was back again, this time in John Russell’s Paris.
“One of my favorite things to do in Paris is to go to the movies. Now, some may blame this on my Southern California upbringing, but to me it’s a true cultural immersion. Seeing a film there feels like a capital-E Event. Parisians relish films as they would a meal, paying close attention and settling in for their little rituals (which used to include uniformed ushers escorting everyone to their seats). Parisian film buffs continue to cherish the old while chasing the new: you might find a classic Hollywood screwball comedy, the latest blockbuster, a brooding new Euro-indie flick, and Les Enfants du paradis playing in a ten-block radius.
“Most of all, I love seeing a film at La Pagode in the seventh arrondissement. A grassroots effort saved this Belle Époque cinema from demolition, and the last time I went there it still had an atmospheric whisper of decay. It’s a delirious Far East fantasy of a building, with a curving roof and a shaggy, mysterious garden. Grauman’s Chinese Theatre has nothing on this!”
—Jennifer Paull, freelance writer and former Fodor’s editor
According to Plan—Maps of Paris
CATHARINE REYNOLDS
ALL PARISIAN HOUSEHOLDS have at least one well-worn plan de Paris, and I cannot imagine, even for a second, being in Paris without my own well-worn edition. In recent years I’ve actually been bringing this old edition, which dates from 1979, with me instead of the newer versions I have because it’s far preferable: there are numbered tabs for the arrondissements, making it faster to find what you’re looking for; I like the cover better; and the individual maps are larger and therefore easier to read. But a few years ago I discovered a large version (measuring about fifteen inches by fifteen) of the plan