Paris Privé

Breakfast in Paris will be my undoing. The croissants are fantastic. I understand it’s something to do with the way the wheat is milled, but whatever the reason, the buttery flaky goodness is hard to resist. After this treat, plus a hot chocolate and an “anti aging” strawberry juice, I rolled out of the breakfast room to meet my driver, Ben.

Ben and I spent three hours together in his gorgeous vintage Citroen DS, driving around Paris The car garners huge attention and I’m likely in many hundreds of strangers’ photographs. Every time we stop, by the time I wander back to the car there is a small crowd of admirers asking Ben questions, taking photos and oohing and ahhing. We drove through both the main thoroughfares and the little winding backstreets, with a running commentary of historical and contemporary tidbits of information. I didn’t know that Pariscwas called the city of light because of the electrification of the streets, or that the Latin quarter was from speaking Latin at the Universities, not to the ethnicity of the area’s residents. 

 Ben finally dropped me off at the unmarked entrance to a private club, Cercle de l’union Interalliee, where I was meeting a friend for lunch. Neither of us had been there before, but I have reciprocal rights from home and it looked interesting. Wikapedia tells me that the clubhouse is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful if not the most prestigious in France. Perhaps this results in a certain, ah, attitude from the reception team. My friend was wearing what was technically a sneaker, but made of tan suede and without a sport shoe sole. Unacceptable apparently- said with a French sneer that belonged in a fifties black and white movie. If he had a moustache, he would have twirled it. Luckily, they had “loan” boots in an appropriate size. Chagrined, we effected the shoe change and slunk into the bar, which was a beautiful room with friendly staff. I note that I was ALSO wearing sneakers but I had rather long pants on that made it less apparent. I pulled the pants right down on my waist so they covered the shoes, hanging on carefully to make sure they didn’t take a further trip south. The food was excellent and they had my favourite champagne as the house drop. Full of Pepper beef rump and cauliflower puree, we swapped the shoes back and giggled our way out the door. I had a snoozy evening, hopefully putting an end to the time zone confusion.