Paris, L’apéritif and Amuse-Bouche

• 

To arrive moments before dawn in Paris, for the first time, weary but utterly thrumming with joie de vivre, is to manifest a life-long dream. It is to drink in the ink dark Seine that lies beneath the Pont Alexandre III bridge, flanked by goldleaf gilded sculptures of winged horses, the lights of the Grand Palais to the left, and the Petit Palais to the right.

Too tired to even think about exploring the streets without a proper nap, the beautiful staff at our hotel on Boulevard Raspail greet us with a tray of tea—oolong, with a touch of eucalyptus, and an undertone of bourbon vanilla.  I’m in mind of Oscar Wilde’s quote, “when good Americans die, they go to Paris.”  We have been good citizens of our homeland and I believe this place is what we’ve earned for good behavior.

The nap becomes a 6 hour sleep but we are refreshed and ready to meet Paris.  Enchanté.  Across the street from our hotel  the world famous Bon Marché department store and Le Grand Epicerie await.  Steph’s pockets are filled with Euros and my head is filled with visions of Cartier adorning my wrist and a Polène crescent hobo baguette (the leather kind) in my grip.

We don’t purchase either, nor do we buy the Caviar potato chips or any of the millions of cheeses, or butters or cookies from the Grand Epicerie.  Instead, we head towards the Seine.  5 minutes later the historic heart of our St. Germain des Prés neighborhood lies before us.  Le Deux Magot is in our sight line.  Here’s the cafe I’ve longed to visit for its reputation as a haven for some of our greatest literary icons—Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, and Richard Right to name just a few. . .But what will forever endure in my personal memory of this storied cafe is when the waiter asks us, after we had finished our bread and cheese and wine and champagne, if we would like to see “the girl with the cake box” and indeed there is a girl, walking around with a cake box, filled with millefeuilles, éclairs, fruit tarts and citrus cheesecakes. Day one is everything we could ask of by way of introduction to Paris. Cobblestones, croissants, cake boxes and champagne. . .