February 2015
I came to Paris to meet a friend I hadn’t seen for twenty years. The owners of the B&B are intrigued by the notion, and essentially allow me my short stay only when I tell them about our reunion. And yet where else could such an impossibly romantic folly come true but in the city of lights?
The B&B is quintessentially Parisian, on the outskirts of the Marais – the old town – under the rooftops of a typical townhouse, previously the maids’ quarters, now an ultra-stylish pied-a-terre for two gentlemen who take me in like a long-lost friend and ply me with wine and nibbles and interrogate me until my own long-lost friend appears on the doorstep, and there’s a moment of readjustment for my hosts when they realise he is in fact a she.
They recover magnificently however, and we are sent off into the cold night with their blessings and directions to an Occitan wine bar, thence to start catching up on whatever goings on we might have accidentally glossed over in the last two decades. It’s only in the wee hours of the morning we part, with me exhausted and her bright-eyed and going strong with jet lag in her corner.
The next two days are spent revelling in the exotic world that is Paris. It’s so familiar-looking, its landmarks and facades so unmistakable, its denizens so Gaulishly stylish, its blend of elegance and bizarrerie uniquely Parisian. We pass a reptile merchant followed by a sex shop (doing brisk trade in 50 Shades of Merchandising) next to a rat catcher (whose window display is full of 100-year old rats in various traps) followed by an elegant tea salon and so on and on.
The crêperies and brasseries provide welcome refuge from the biting cold, but we do manage a few proper tourist attractions, among them Notre Dame and Place de la Republique, where we marvel at the many e-wheelers zipping about on their futuristic contraptions (e-wheels are paired down segways, essentially self-propelled unicycles without a saddle).
All to quickly the weekend comes to an end, and we part with the sad realisation that it may well be years before we meet again, even though we both swear it will not be thus.
Whatever happens, we will always have Paris.