Paris, My Sweet (6 page)

We crossed to the Left Bank, past the Sorbonne and the giant bookstores and camping outlets. We stopped at a little café and ordered a lunch of salads, omelets, and roast chicken from the chalkboard menu. And, after slowly strolling through Saint-Germain's pedestrian-packed streets, admiring the chic Frenchies who were, in turn, admiring the
vitrines
of Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel, and L'Artisan Parfumeur, we arrived at the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the magnolia, dogwood, and lilac trees were in full bloom. The sprawling lawns glowed green, their spring debut especially vivid. Impossibly cute kids rode donkeys, and serious old men tossed metal balls—
pétanque
, I explained to Mom and Bob—a sort of lawn bowling favored by old-timers.

By then, it was getting late. We had logged several miles with nary a peep of achy knees or blistered feet from either Mom or Bob. Did they want to Métro back, I asked preemptively.
Mais
non!
They wanted to see more. I was beginning to see that they were falling in love with Paris.

So we dawdled at another picture-perfect café with
trois
crèmes
, the closest thing to giant American coffees with milk, normally reserved for breakfast only, but we needed to reinforce ourselves for the return home, and I wasn't going to let French protocol slow us down now, not on that glorious day. Fortified, we crossed back over the Seine, taking the pedestrian bridge, Le Pont des Arts, for its charm and views.
There's the Eiffel Tower again
, I showed them.
And
that
massive
building
there? That's the Louvre!
Mom and Bob spun themselves around, taking it all in with starry eyes.
And
look, right there, that's the tip of Île de la Cité, where we were earlier today. And just look at that perfect singular weeping willow at the tip of the island
. I joined their reveries. That lone tree always slayed me.

In just seven hours, Mom and Bob had seen many of Paris's classic landmarks. I knew it had been a great day. But still, it wasn't until dinner that I knew how deeply they were affected.

We were all pretty tired when we got back to the tree house and decided to make sandwiches for dinner rather than go to a restaurant. So Mom and I left Bob in care of Milo and wended our way back down those six flights of stairs to pick up goods for dinner.

I loved shopping on rue Montorgueil so much that I often carted home more food—slices of spinach and goat cheese
tourtes
; jars of lavender honey and cherry jam, tiny, wild handpicked strawberries;
fraises
aux
bois
—than one person alone could possibly eat. Now at least I had an excuse to fill up my canvas shopping bag.

“Doesn't it smell amazing?” I gushed once we had crossed the threshold of my favorite
boulangerie
. Mom, standing inside the doorway clutching her purse, just nodded as she filled her lungs with the warm, yeasty air, her eyes alight with a brightness I didn't remember from home. With a fresh-from-the-oven baguette in hand, we went to the Italian
épicerie
, where from the long display of red peppers glistening in olive oil, fresh raviolis dusted in flour, and piles and piles of
salumi
,
soppressata
, and
saucisson
, we chose some thinly sliced
jambon
blanc
and a mound of creamy mozzarella. At the artisanal bakery, Eric Kayser, we took our time selecting three different cakes from the rows of lemon tarts, chocolate éclairs, and what I was beginning to recognize as the French classics: dazzling
gâteaux
with names like the Saint-Honoré, Paris-Brest, and Opéra.
Voilà
, just like that, we had dinner and dessert. We headed back to the tree house—those pesky six flights were
still
there
—and prepared for our modest dinner
chez-moi
.

Mom set the table with the chipped white dinner plates and pressed linen napkins. I set out the condiments—Maille Dijon mustard, tart and grainy with multicolored seeds; organic mayo from my local “bio” market; and Nicolas Alziari olive oil in a beautiful blue and yellow tin—and watched them get to it. They sliced open the baguette, the intersection of crisp and chewy, and dressed it with slivers of ham and dollops of mustard. I made a fresh mozzarella sandwich, drizzling it with olive oil and dusting it with salt and pepper. Moments later, we sat down and bit in.

“Oh my God!” Bob exclaimed. There was a pause while we waited for him to finish chewing. “Why can't Americans make bread like this? Those things they call ‘French baguettes' at home?” He examined his sandwich in disbelief. “Those aren't baguettes! They're nothing like this!” He took another bite. My own sandwich was crusty and crunchy on the outside, pinchably soft on the inside. “My god, I don't think I've ever tasted anything like this. This is incredible.” Mom nodded in agreement, but in barely two minutes, she had stealthily put away half her sandwich. The more we ate, the slower Mom and Bob went, as if prolonging the taste of simple perfection.

Then we moved onto our favorite course, dessert. As I sliced the small
gâteaux
we had selected at Eric Kayser into thirds, each of us did a little dance of excitement in our seats. The first two square tarts, pistachio-raspberry and pear-grapefruit, were both built upon thick, moist shortbread crusts, the only difference between them being the beautiful marzipan center of the pistachio-raspberry slice. The third cake was a dreamy dark chocolate creation that included layers of praline, mousse, and ganache. Mom took a bite of the pistachio-raspberry cake and put down her fork. It was almost as if she were disgusted, but it was just the opposite.

“Now that,” she declared, “is delicious.” The tone of her voice exposed barely concealed contempt for all the previous desserts we had ever eaten together in America. All the chocolate cakes, apple pies, and raspberry streusels—at that moment, they were all poor imitations of what dessert was supposed to be like. I started giggling at Mom's reaction, and Bob followed. Then, in all seriousness, we turned back to dessert. There was more stunned silence, more looks of disbelief. More food heaven. This, I was discovering, was one of my favorite things about Paris.

For the next several days, Mom and Bob were total troopers. We hauled ourselves from Saint-Germain to the Marais, from the Bastille to Montmartre. We climbed the Eiffel Tower and walked the Champs-Élysées. From the monumental church, La Madeleine, in the eighth arrondissement, we walked east to the quiet charm of the Palais-Royal's gardens. We sampled morning pastries at Stohrer, afternoon
gâteaux
at Ladurée, and anything that struck our fancy at the countless neighborhood
boulangeries
we passed. On the very last day of their visit, we were faced with what every traveler dreads: rain. There was only one thing to do, and that was go to the Louvre.

What can I say about the Louvre? To date, I had logged about eight months of my life in Paris and made it to the world's most visited art museum exactly once: on a drunken midnight run with my college friends when we illicitly frolicked in the fountains surrounding I. M. Pei's glass pyramid. This visit with Mom and Bob was slightly more dignified.

All three of us were prepared to be impressed, but even so, we underestimated the museum's magnificence. Its size and scope were incomprehensible, with frescoed ceilings floating about one hundred feet over our heads and never-ending corridors and wings that extended forever before linking to more corridors and wings. And then there was the art: canvases the size of Alabama trailer homes and sculptures of every god and mortal throughout history. There were French Rococo and Italian Renaissance paintings, ancient Greek sculptures and Egyptian decorative art, Dutch Baroque and early Netherlandish, Islamic, Etruscan, Hellenic, Roman, Persian…There was the massive 1563 painting
The
Wedding
at
Cana
, featuring a feast just a little bit larger and more ravishing than ours had been that week, and, of course, the
Mona
Lisa
, which was swarmed by mobs of tourists aiming their digital cameras at her ambiguous smile.

But for me, there was nothing more stunning than the Winged Victory of Samothrace. As we approached the goddess Nike, rising step by step up the Daru staircase, her beauty loomed over us. The outstretched wings, the flowing garments, the forward movement—it was both graceful and powerful; there was so much emotion chiseled in that stone-cold marble. I kept turning around and around her, looking at her from the left, and then the right, and then from straight on. My heart was beating in overdrive, and my arms were covered in goose bumps. I'm not normally so moved by art, but that sculpture reduced me to mush. Feeling overwhelmed to the brink of exhaustion, Mom, Bob, and I decided it was time to do what we did best: break for sweets.

Being that we were in the first arrondissement, given that it was a crappy day, knowing Mom and Bob as I know them, there was only one place for us to go: Angelina. This century-old tea salon, or
salon
de
thé,
on rue Rivoli is a classic tourist trap. But it's not without its charms. The Belle-Époque architect Édouard-Jean Niermans's interior still evokes elegance of decades past, when the likes of Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn—not schleps like us, in our sneakers and rain gear—stopped in for tea. It was founded in 1903 by the Austrian confectioner Antoine Rumpelmayer and named after his daughter-in-law. The whole atmosphere feels opulent, with gilded crown moldings, petite pedestal tables topped in marble, and pastoral landscapes reflected in arched mirrors hanging around the room, all bathed in a warm yellow glow. And then, of course, there is the world-famous
chocolat
chaud
.

Can liquid be considered a proper dessert?
Oui
, in the rare instance that it's something as exquisite as Angelina's signature
chocolat
“l'Africain
.” So obscenely thick and outrageously rich, it's even better than when, as a kid, I'd sip Swiss Miss hot cocoa and savor those mini-marshmallows after sledding on an icy winter day.

Angelina's hot chocolate is so smooth and velvety, each sip sensually coats your tongue and teeth. It's both refined and indulgent; it's a simple recipe but a sophisticated experience. It arrives on a silver tray and is served perfectly warm—not scalding hot—with a side of whipped cream sculpted into a decorative puff. It's the perfect way to warm up on a rainy spring day. A decadent way to get your day's chocolate quota. It's hot chocolate worth the price of airfare to Paris.

“This reminds me of the cocoa from Jacques,” my mom said, daintily blowing into her fine white cup.

Bob's face, flushed with the rich drink, broke into a grin. “Ohhhh, butt-her!” he cried in a pitch that pained my ears and made a nearby table of Harajuku girls look over at us in alarm. As soon as I made eye contact with them, they turned away and started giggling among themselves. Half the patrons in the airy tearoom were Japanese. The rest were a mix of Americans and Germans, with just a few French
grandes
dames
.