"The Weeks of Living Dangerously: Revisiting London and Paris in Our Early Eighties During the Time of Covid," PrimeTimes/Ithaca Times, Jan. 2023, 14-20.
Notwithstanding my having a serious case of Covid blended with bronchitis, and Marcia a milder one in Paris, our 23-day trip to London and Paris, two of our favorite European cities, offered us much pleasure and excitement. Our trip included six days in New York, but I will save the wonders of Manhattan for a future article.
Traveling at age 81 to cities we love means savoring little pleasures, sleeping more, eating less, pacing ourselves rather than going full tilt from 9 a.m. to midnight, being more attentive to health issues, and being aware that there is no guarantee of return.
London:
After a four-year absence, we enjoyed the cultural variety of London, especially the museums and theatre. We included four theatrical performances.
One of joys of travel, and one I find especially prevalent in London are small surprises: the tiger cubs at the Regent Park Zoo; an afternoon rehearsal of baroque music at St. Martins-in-the-Fields before the evening baroque concert; a terrific busker singing songs of Cold Play and other pop songs while secondary school students walking by stopped dance to his music; an exhibition at the Japanese embassy of Japanese influences on British Victorian and Edwardian painting and culture; and the pleasures of walking through Hyde Park to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Alas, surprises can also take less benign forms such as my being pickpocketed at a London Tube Station. Also, we were in the next room of the National Gallery when environmental activists (terrorists?), wearing t-shirts proclaiming "Just Stop Oil" attacked Van Gogh's Sunflowers with two cans of tomato soup. In a video of the incident one of the protestors asks, "What is worth more, art or life? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?"
Fortunately, glass over the painting protected it from damage. I thought seriously about the enriching, educational, joyful value of art in our lives and how the various arts are paths to self-discovery. By deflecting us from tasks and suspending our minds from everyday concerns, the arts—music, theatre, painting and sculpture, and literature--provide another kind of reality, more in tune with dreams and hopes, what we might call the poetry of life. Our experience with the arts provides quality moments between the tick and tock of chronological time. We return to our everyday world more fully aware of what being human means.
We enjoyed wonderful museum exhibits in London, but by far the most powerful and moving is the recent installation of the Holocaust exhibit at the Imperial War Museum on Lambeth Road. Beginning with how Jews lived in Europe before the rise of Hitler's virulent racism, the exhibit focuses how individual lives and families were destroyed.
Another compelling exhibit, commissioned by the Tate British, is a powerful investigation into the effects of colonialism entitled Procession by Hew Locke (https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/hew-locke)
Other London pleasures: the National Gallery at Trafalgar square where we saw several of our favorite paintings including Leonardo's Virgin on Rocks, Van Eyck's Artolfini Portrait, Holbein's The Ambassadors, and Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast. We also enjoyed a full day at the temporary London Frieze art market in Regents Park. Another enjoyable stop was the sale at the Phillips Gallery of major modern and contemporary painting and sculpture.
No London visit is complete without a visit to the Tate Modern, the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum which seems better organized than in the past. The National Portrait Gallery, which we always visit, was closed.
For the past 61 years, I have enjoyed theatre in London. It is still less expensive than New York but now only marginally so. We saw four excellent performances, the best of which may have been the National Theatre's Arthur Miller's The Crucible which reminds us, at this fraught time in the 21st century. how the plague of lies, gossip, and group hysteria can undermine a community. Another splendid evening of theatre was a strong revival of Philip Taylor's 1982 play Good. A self-deluding German (effectively played by David Tennant) who considers himself a good person, rationalizes his becoming a Nazi party official and coldly and dispassionately puts his self-interest first, while refusing to help his Jewish best friend, a psychiatrist. Also excellent was the National Theatre's imaginative production of Blues for an Alabama Sky, which evokes the hope, dreams, racism, homophobia, and disappointment of 1930s Harlem. The Royal Shakespeare's slapstick and overly lengthy version of Much Ado About Nothing would have been more fun had we not attended the open-air theatre on a very cool October night and shivered through the performance.
London Hotel:
As on our last several visits, we stayed at the JW Marriott Grosvenor Square on Park Lane where the staff appreciates our loyalty and takes good care of us. The lounge for elite Marriot guests is excellent, although the food is not as elegant as in the past. But the lounge hostess sent champagne, cheesecake. and flowers up for Marcia's birthday, as well as fresh fruit another day, and did everything possible to make us feel special.
London Dining:
One of the challenges in London is how to eat a decent meal before theatre. The informal cafes at the National Theatre are adequate, but do not really provide a nice dinner. I do have three recommendations in the Soho area; all are good values and less than $50 without alcohol. Our favorite was Rasa Sayang, 5 Macclesfield Street, providing cuisine from Malaysia and Singapore, we liked shrimp soup with noodles, spicy vegetables, and roti canai bread. We also enjoyed two Chinese restaurants: Lotus Garden, 15A Gerrard Street, and Old Towne 97, 19 Wardour Street; both featured roast duck.
Zayna, 24 New Quebec Street, is a quite decent Indian restaurant, especially its Palak Gosht, a lamb dish, in spinach sauce. Even though the cost was moderate, I realized later that I paid a slightly padded bill, that is, more than menu prices.
Paris:
After ten nights in London, we took the Eurostar train from St. Pancras station through the Chunnel to Gare du Nord in Paris. This two hour 15 minutes or so journey is much more pleasant than flying.
Whenever we return to Paris, we are uplifted by its energy, beauty, often wonderful food, and intellectual and cultural heritage--including its art museums. Yet at the same time we are fully aware of France's collaboration with the Nazis during the 1940-1944 German Occupation and France's complicity in the Holocaust.
Because we both had covid in Paris, Marcia first and I more seriously in combination with bronchitis, we did less museum time than we might have and sometimes did museums separately. We had thought we might do some day trips to Versailles and Chartres, where I had been decades ago, but that will need wait for the next time.
We did get to the Louvre, the D'Orsay—both mobbed with visitors--as well as the less crowded Pompidou, Picasso Museum, L'Orangerie, and the Museum of Jewish Art and History (71 rue du Temple). We saw a less than inspiring and overly long performance of Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Mayerling by the ballet de l'Opéra but what saved the evening was that the ballet was performed at the elegant baroque Palais Garnier, with its Chagall ceiling.
Paris is a walking city; on the Champs-Élysées, we stopped along the way for a traditional crêpe. We did visit Notre Dame for an outside view; it has been closed since the April 2019 fire.
We never miss the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation which is not far from the back of Notre Dame (Square de l'Ile-de-France, 7 Quai de l'Archevêché); over the Mémorial has become more focused on the Holocaust.
One day we took a nostalgic walk on the left bank in the area where we used to stay in the 7th arrondissement where Rue du Bac runs into Boulevard Raspail. That day we also visited the 6th arrondissement, with Eglise Saint-Germain-des Pres and its few famous landmark cafés including Les Deux Magots, and Café Flore as well as Brasserie Lipp.
Paris Hotel:
For years we have stayed at the well-located boutique hotel (97 rooms) Renaissance Vendome 4 Rue du Mont Thabor across from the Tuileries Garden, a welcoming public park where we walked frequently. The hotel's doctor on call came to our hotel room on a Sunday, diagnosed my Covid and bronchitis, and gave me a prescription for Paxlovid plus a steroid, an antibiotic, and large quantities of Tylenol. Of course, I paid his fee. Not only were we impressed with the doctor, but also with the inexpensive pharmaceuticals which cost a tiny fraction of what they would have cost here without insurance reimbursement,
Paris Dining
Our most satisfying evening activity in France has always been a nice dinner. The French do wonders with fish. Without alcohol, the restaurants below cost us no more than 70 Euros (with the Euro equaling $1) and often less, but do keep in mind we sometimes share courses and eat less than when we were younger,
One of the great values in Paris is L'Ardoise, 28 Rue du Mont Thabor, the same street as our hotel. On our first visit we began by splitting a delicious lobster ravioli. My main course was bass with cabbage, while Marcia had sliced lamb with vegetable ragu; our dessert was a pear tart with vanilla ice cream. The second time we split a prix fixe dinner which began with a different lobster ravioli, almost raw tuna, and an amazingly elegant fig and apple tart.
An excellent feature of L'Ardoise is that the menu is tweaked from night to night.
We had dinner twice at Les Jalles, 14 Rue Capucines; on both visits to this old favorite, we shared Ravioli Langoustine (prawns). On the first visit we also split a delicious roast chicken with carrot puree and chocolate lava cake. On the second visit, we had a wonderful sea bass with fennel and an ordinary crème brûlée. The one harried and hectic server does not respond immediately but with a little kibitzing and tolerance, we always have nice experiences.
Another satisfying restaurant that we always include is La Robe and Le Palais, 13 Rue des Lavandieres Sainte-Opportune, which is a good walk from our hotel. After we shared both an opening course of traditional pâté with a small salad, followed by excellent bass in crab sauce with assorted vegetables, we split one order of Paris-Brest, French dessert consisting of five small pastries.
One of our most interesting meals was at the Israeli restaurant Balagan, located in our Paris hotel and modelled on informal late evening restaurants in Tel-Aviv or, in earlier times, Beirut. The energetic young staff creates a festive if not raucous ambience. The special bread (a surcharge), Mediterranean salad, and a lamb chop dish were all excellent. The desserts were less exciting; the orange tart was merely adequate, and the deconstructed tiramisu should not have left the kitchen.
We had a late lunch the day we had ballet tickets at le Saint O, the restaurant of Hotel Royal Saint Honoré, 221 rue Saint Honoré. I had sea bream with basic vegetables and Marcia had what she thought was a splendid cheeseburger, which she regarded as comfort food. An even better late lunch was in the well-appointed main restaurant of the D'Orsay where we split a fettuccine with salad after a sharing an elegant Scandinavian soup with fresh and smoked salmon, vegetables, dill. and rye croutons.
While not as much as a favorite as some of the aforementioned restaurants, Flottes, 2 rue Cambon, is always bustling and dependable as well open Sundays when it is difficult to find restaurants. Our best dish was slow cooked veal accompanied by ordinary mashed potatoes - seemingly a staple with almost every main course--and a good but less than iconic onion soup without the traditional cheese and bread covering.
Conclusion:
We began our 23-day European trip with five nights in New York which included many art museums--notably MoMA and The Met-- two performances of the NYC Ballet, and the production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman that originated in London. The contrast among three of our favorite cities was a source of enjoyment. We love the energy, diversity, surprises, cultural opportunities, and creativity of Manhattan and try to visit several times a year. In all three cities we noticed what seemed the increasing economic disparity between the privileged and the working class and were appalled by the number of people living on the street.
As we concluded 29 days of travel to NYC, London, Paris, we asked ourselves why travel is so important to us and had three responses: 1) Curiosity about how and for what other people live and have lived; 2) Self-discovery as we learn from new experiences and people we meet; 3) The joy of returning to places we love.
Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University. His recent books include How to Succeed in College and Beyond and Endtimes?Crises and Turmoil at the New York Times, 1999-2009. He has been writing travel articles for more than 20 years and has visited more than 100 countries. He can be reached at drs6@cornell.edu.