From Style to Soul

Europe » France » Île-de-France
October 10th 2022

Published: October 12th 2022

Edit Blog Post

Dr Jon

Les Rats

Dead rats hanging in the window of an exterminator. Next to our restaurant!

In an old house in Paris all covered with flames

"Dad... Dad... Is that a fire alarm?"

"No. It's just some device." A faint peeping had worked its way into my sleep. It sounded like a cry for attention from one of my lesser gadgets, probably my watch, which told me that it was 2 AM, but wasn't peeping.

My daughter, Laura, and I were on a journey to connect with distant relatives in Yorkshire, England. We decided to add a little glamor to the trip by first spending a few days in Paris. I booked us into the Grand Hotel Dechampaigne on the Right Bank a few steps from Pont Neuf. From its name, I imagined Dechampaigne would have an elegant entrance with Art Nouveau doors, a high-ceilinged lobby with a massive chandelier, and bellhops tripping over each other. In reality, Dechampaigne was tucked into a back alley, its glory days, if any, long passed. Its vintage elevator was big enough for two people who knew each other well, and the ride to our cramped room on the fourth floor took five minutes. Our bathroom was so small that we had to step out of it

Laura having a sip of wine after sketching me while waiting for dinner to arrive.

to open the shower door.

To allay Laura's fears about the fire alarm I stepped out into the hallway where the faint peeping was now clearly discernable as a loudly blaring fire alarm. (I need to get my hearing checked.) Thirty seconds later Laura and I were quickly descending a staircase crowded with panicked people, all in their pajamas. On the first floor we were met by the hotel manager coming the other way. He told us to return to our rooms, that the alarm had been triggered because someone on the third floor was smoking a cigarette. Probably a Gauloise. I thought to myself. So French.

Americans in Paris (Lots of them)

Our daily routine was this: in the mornings: cafe Americanos and croissants at a sidewalk cafe, wander the streets for a few hours, stop at another sidewalk cafe for Americanos with crepes, more wandering, a multi-course dinner at a bistro with lots of wine and unpronounceable but delicious food, then home to watch Office reruns on Laura's computer. At each of these meals Laura would pull out her pile of art supplies and begin painting or drawing whatever caught her eye. She would quickly

Hats and Flowers

Several cafes were decorated with flowers and hanging hats as shown in this remarkable painting by Laura.

transform pools of colored ink haphazardly splashed across her page into a beautiful image of the scene in front of her. People at neighboring tables would crane their necks to watch her. A waiter was sure he had seen her work on Instagram. I would pay the tab, then quietly slip away for an hour to let her work.

Going to Paris in late September seemed like a brilliant idea. I pictured Laura and me wandering the empty halls of the Louvre, our footfalls echoing, pausing in front of a Delacroix to admire the flaring nostrils of a war horse, the anguished expressions of wounded rebels, or Lady Liberty's exposed breasts. In reality, our morning in the Louvre could better be compared to rush hour at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Pausing in front of a painting was not on the menu. As soon as we entered we were eager to leave. Chaotic battalions of tourists with American accents moved en masse from one painting to the next. I had to shoulder my way through crowds at each painting to catch a quick glimpse before being shouldered away by the next art lover. No one was masked.

Everywhere

Art Lovers?

A long snaking line of people waits to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa.

we went there were throngs of American tourists. My last visit to Paris was back in 1979. I remember wandering into Shakespeare & Co. to look at photographs of my literary heroes. I was eager to introduce Laura to this literary pantheon, but now there's a queue to simply walk into the store, get a stamp that says you were there, then leave.

Back in '79, I was adamant about not visiting the Eiffel Tower. To me, this was the epitome of bourgeois tourism. My opinion hadn't changed since then, but as a father, I couldn't say no to my daughter's request to see the tower at night from a boat on the river. Ironically, this turned out to be kind of cool. Up close the tower is impressively huge. Every hour there's a five-minute light show. Bright lights flash up and down the tower. Near the middle of our river cruise three young people stood on the bench next to us and opened their coats to show their T-shirts. The first said "will", the second said "you", and the last said "marry me" (Good thing the first two didn't get switched.) The intended audience was a girl sitting

Eiffel

The tower was impressively huge.

next to her boyfriend a few rows ahead. I didn't actually see her say yes. Laura sensed that her level of enthusiasm seemed a little muted.

Trains

I've always been a big fan of European trains. In Switzerland, my rail pass was like a magic carpet that would carry me and my latte to any corner of the country and back again in time for dinner. Last year my friend Cay and I traveled around Eastern Europe on trains for mere pennies per mile. To save the hassle of getting to and from airports (the hardest part of any trip in my opinion) I decided Laura and I would take the train from Paris to London, then another to Manchester. I didn't even realize that it was possible to take a train from Paris to London until I saw an article in the paper a few weeks earlier about how one had gotten stuck in the Chunnel and it had taken hours to get everyone out.

I get a little tense at boarding times, so I insisted that we go early to Gare Nord. We arrived with plenty of time for our 10:30 train. We even had

Paris skyline

People enjoying the view of Paris from Montmartre

time to get coffee and croissants at a cafe across the street. At 10:00 we went looking for our train and found a long queue of waiting passengers. A talkative Brit accompanied by his beleaguered-looking wife got in the queue behind us. In under three minutes I learned that he was Jewish and that his father had been a carpenter who constructed gallows to hang Nazi war criminals at the end of the war. He was anxious about missing his 11:30 train. I realized that we weren't going to make our 10:30 train. We were in line waiting to clear customs and immigration. I had forgotten to factor Brexit into my plans!

I grabbed Laura and jumped into the lane reserved for business class passengers. We ran to the ticket booth and I whipped out my phone to show her our tickets. But they were gone! Before leaving home, I had carefully created a folder in my email account to store all of my tickets and reservations for this trip. I must've checked the train tickets a hundred times; I had checked them only minutes earlier, but now they were gone. In my nervous fumbling I must have accidentally

Paris Fashion

Bought this old coat for 10 Euros at a popup in the Latin Quarter so Laura could walk home without freezing. Luckily it was insect-free.

swept them into any one of dozens of other folders. I didn't think I would need it, but I had printed out the QR codes for the tickets. They were crumpled up in the bottom of my suitcase. It turned out, this was enough to be issued tickets for the 11:30 train. In London we had a sweaty six-block dash to Euston Station for our Manchester train, which we missed. Again, my stress level began to boil over, and again it turned out that reissuing tickets for a later train was no problem. Throughout all of my hysteria Laura calmly sketched in her art book.

I'm starting to reevaluate my rosy picture of train travel. Running to catch trains is no fun. It's made worse by the fact that everyone else is running to catch their trains. Laura and I were buffeted about like fish trying to swim upstream. As an added obstacle, every station seemed to have a broken escalator forcing us to break down the pile of bags balanced on her suitcase and carry them.

We both experienced culture shock in Manchester. Unlike Parisians, the people here seem admirably un-self-conscious. They

Drawing lessons

Laura teaches her niece Alecia how to draw unicorns.

look like they buy their clothes at charity shops, they drink enormous quantities of beer, they eat French fries with every meal, and no one has ever been to a gym. We arrived at the train station at the same time as a local train carrying belligerent intoxicated rugby fans returning from an important game between Yorkshire and Lancaster (a rivalry that goes back to the War of the Roses). Ahead of us, a shoeless girl wearing a sparkly dress drunkenly stumbled into the street in front of a car. The car had to slam on its brakes to avoid killing her. "F___ you!" she shouted at the driver. Strangely, Laura and I felt a sense of relief. At last, we were among our people. At last, we weren't automatically the least fashionable people in a crowd. At last, we could loosen our belts and let our bellies hang out.

That night at a raucous but friendly pub around the corner from our hotel I ate a steak pie with chips (French fries) and a side of mashed peas. Laura ate fish and chips with a side of mashed peas. We would later learn that mashed peas come with

The Fam

From left to right: David, Laura, weird guy who wanted to be in the photo, me, Gayle's sister Barbara, and Gayle.

every meal. Maybe the Brits think it adds a healthy splash of green to offset all of the carbs.

A few hours later, back in our hotel room, Laura suddenly jumped out of her bed and announced that she had left her purse in the pub. She ran out the door in her pajamas before I could say a word. Then the room went dark. In her rush she had grabbed my hotel key, which was plugged into a switch that kept the lights on. Of course, her phone and hotel key were in her purse, so all I could do was sit in the dark and hope that she wouldn't be kidnapped by peaky blinders and would eventually return. It turned out the waitress had found her purse and put it behind the bar. (Reminder to tip well, even in Europe.) But the bar was crowded, so she had to wait—in her pajamas—and I had to wait—in the dark—until the he could fetch her purse.

Family

The next evening we ate dinner at The Navigation, a 15^th Century pub that sits at the edge of a canal in the sleepy village of Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire.

Yorkshire Canal System

One of many canals dug during the Industrial Revolution to move textiles, coal, and other products.

We were surrounded by family. My cousin, Gayle, and I share a great-grandfather. At one end of the table Laura was teaching Alecia, Gayle's 8-year-old granddaughter, how to draw unicorns. Gayle's husband, David, and I were slamming down pints of local brews. We were all waiting for our fish and chips with sides of mashed peas. It felt good to be off the tourist circuit and to be experiencing everyday life.

The canal behind the pub was a reminder that 200 years ago this is where the Industrial Revolution began. Water paddles and steam engines automated mechanical looms, flying shuttles, and spinning jennies. The local textile industry moved from cottages to factories. A hundred years later my grandfather would be a "smoother" in a textile mill not far from the town of Morley. At a mill Christmas party raffle, as the family story goes, he won a piano. The next day he sold it for enough money for passage to Youngstown, Ohio, where a friend said he could find work in the steel mills. A year later he had earned enough to send for his wife and my 5-year-old father.

Earlier that day Gayle and David drove us

The Mill

This is the textile mill where my grandparents worked. It has been converted into apartments but the chimney stands as a kind of monument.

to Brick Row, the address on my father's birth certificate. I always pictured Brick Row to be in the middle of a steaming ghetto, but it was a row of ten houses (not the originals) set in the middle of rolling pastures. We also visited the factory where my grandfather worked and where he presumably won his piano. Although now converted into apartments, a few smokestacks still stand to commemorate the factory.

Changing of the Guard

A few days after we arrived in Edinburgh Laura flew home. It was hard to say goodbye to my travel buddy. I spent the day kicking around the city, feeling kind of lonely, but by sunset I was sipping Scotch whiskey at the Jolly Judge pub across the table from my old travel buddy, Adele, ready to begin the next phase of my trip. We might have been sitting at the very table where Boswell met Johnson.

The story continues in the next entry: The Highlands Road Trip

Additional photos below

Photos: 21, Displayed: 21