2 Nights in Paris
When flying international, we like to book the national airline of our destination. This way, our cultural immersion can start before we even leave the US. On previous trips, we have flown Swiss Air, China Air, Finnair, LOT (Polish), Air Lingus (Ireland), even Aeroflot (Russian). So it was a no-brainer to book a red-eye on Air France to Paris. Besides, with the recent controversies over at Boeing, we felt a little safer flying on an Airbus which is an European commercial airplane builder.
One of the real benefits of flying Air France is access to French movies without American distributors. And what luck, I didn't know Michel Gondry (my absolutely favorite French director) had made a new movie called The Book of Solutions and it was available to stream right on my seatback screen. Gondry hasn't made a major feature film since Mood Indigo in 2015 (I was one of the few people who actually appreciated what many people dismissed as an incomprehensible disaster). So I sat back, hit "play" and was ready to revisit an old friend. This movie turned out to be one of his "raw" low budget productions that look like it was spontaneously pieced together with duct tape. It's a signature style that has worked in many of his music videos and I was glad to see that he hasn't lost his quirky sense of humor. But the movie began to move into uncomfortable territory pretty quickly and then kept sinking to darker depths. It was pretty obvious that this film was a confession of sorts about what might have gone wrong during the production of Mood Indigo. The only other film that has come this close to authentic on-screen soul-baring was Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. Both films are fictionalized autobiographies, both films are about mad creative geniuses who are aware of their weaknesses. Both films are apologies to those they have wronged. But Gondry went further. If you believed what you saw on screen, Gondry has real mental health issues and desperately needs help. There was metaphoric blood being spilled on screen, buckets of it, it was like watching a man commit suicide right in front of your eyes -- except this man was a master filmmaker making exactly the film he wanted to make. Bearing witness to his pain was the most uncomfortable cinematic experience I have ever endured. When it was all over, I couldn't watch another movie for the rest of the flight. French films. Love them or hate them, but no one makes them like they do. This one will have to sit for a while before I can decide whether I liked it or not.
But there's more. Fast-forward to our return flight and Air France has removed Gondry's film from their streaming list and a new batch of French films was ready for me to explore. So I chose two more recent releases not available in the US (and maybe never will). I started with A Difficult Year, a clever and layered romantic comedy that was actually funny (sometimes I find French humor challenging). The timing of this particular seatback screening was particularly auspicious as the film was set in modern day Paris and some key scenes were set in Charles de Gaulle airport where our flight just took off. In a way, it was almost as if the movie was designed to be a perfect send-off for visitors to France who wanted one last feel-good emotional boost as they fly home. The second film of my in-flight double feature was Making Of which turned out to be a pretty good homage to Truffaut's Day for Night. I admired the director for even trying to imitate what many consider the best film about movie-making -- and he almost pulls it off. It also just so happened that Jonathan Cohen starred in both of these films and now I'm a fan.
Of course, the other big bonus of flying Air France is the food. Sure it's still airplane food, but it was French airplane food and they somehow made the food tastier than anything I've eaten on any other airline. Since we're now in French air space (at least in my mind), it came as no surprise that free-flowing wine, champagne, and cognac were also offered. And since the French love to show off their culture, Air France had prepared a "Welcome to France" music playlist which starts playing the second the wheels touched the ground. The first song? Vanille Fraise by L'Imperatrice (my absolutely favorite French band). I'm not making this up, Michel Gondry and L'Imperatrice both on my first Air France flight. How was this possible? Was this flight designed especially for me? Was this a foreshadowing of things to come? Only time will tell.
Upon arrival in Paris, we followed the signs to the airport train station and bought a regional rail ticket for $12. Express trains to the city leave every 10 minutes and we were able to transfer to a local Metro with the same ticket which took us to within a few block of our hotel. Total travel time? About an hour. We're in France, where functional infrastructure and cheap mass transit is the norm. Well, maybe except during strikes (so we've heard).
Bonnie usually books the hotels and she chose a small boutique hotel called Sleeping Belle. This charming little place was a short walk to the train station where we will be boarding our TGV bullet train to Lyon in a few days. Turns out this hotel was not only convenient but extremely charming. As was our luck, Sleeping Belle had a small restaurant/club in the basement called The Library which has monthly live music events. On the second night we were there, we caught a wonderful jazz singer with her virtuoso guitar partner who played a romantic two-hour set of beautiful jazz in all its flavors. From French chanson to Amy Winehouse to jazzy renditions of Sade, their wide range of styles included tributes to Django Reinhardt as well as Fellini-esque Italian love songs. Paris basement jazz clubs may be a romantic movie fantasy, but this night's entertainment came pretty close to making that fantasy a reality.
We only had one full day in Paris, so I wanted a focused cultural experience and Patricia (@myparistay) from Eatwith.com fulfilled that desire perfectly. I booked her "Food, Culture & History Tour of the Jewish Quarter in Paris" tour because it combined history with food (my favorite subject). In her two-hour tour of Le Marais (a historical Ashkenazi Jewish neighborhood that reached its height at the end of the 19th century), Patricia regaled us with fascinating stories told in historical context. A highlight of the tour was a private visit to Agoudas Hakehilos, a "secret" historically significant synagogue designed by Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard in 1913. Although not restored, walking through the synagogue felt like a time-travel experience.
Patricia's plan was to have a picnic in a park as part of the tour, but because of the unseasonably cold weather, we decided to move the picnic indoors to our hotel room. We stopped by Sacha Finkelsztajn, the famous yellow Yiddish deli where Patricia bought some pastrami, herring, gefilte fish, chopped liver, tarama (a pinkish salted and cured roe of carp), and more. In the end, she handed us a goodie bag with an incredible spread that also included a loaf of traditional challah bread, apple strudel, cheese cake and vodka. We were so happy with our haul that we forgot we were in Paris where Michelin-starred restaurants were just a hop and a skip away.
Two nights pass pretty quickly, but we know we will be back in Paris at the end of or trip. So we bid farewell for now and head to the train station for our two-hour express train ride to Lyon via Ouigo (France's cheap no-frills TGV bullet trains). Our six-day riverboat cruise on the Rhone river is next.
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