Any visit to Paris will throw up surprises! Amishi Parekh traverses the city’s oldest quarter, Le Marais, and discovers its hidden agenda.
It was my second time in Paris, the first being almost 20 years ago. In two decades, for me, the city had taken on a mythical quality — a result of my own adolescent memories and the images that I had absorbed via films and the internet. And so, at the tail end of a trip to France, I stepped onto the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle Airport gingerly, hoping that the city would live up to all the hype.
At the back of my mind, Audrey Hepburn’s Sabrina was reminding me that ‘Paris isn’t for changing planes...it’s for changing your outlook...for throwing open the windows and letting in la vie en rose’. But with its now copiously Instagrammed sights, I wanted to shirk all the cliches and tourist haunts and find out if what Ms Hepburn described still existed.
I checked into the Pullman hotel in La Defense, chiding myself at first for staying in Paris’ business district. But all was forgotten on the first night, as I bit into a truffle mushroom naan followed by one stuffed with scallops, freshly baked in the restaurant’s tandoor oven, and washed down with champagne.
The next day, perfect, cloudless and sunny, the French capital had really turned on the charm. And so I embarked on a walk — that most Parisian of weekend activities. At the Saint-Paul metro station near Le Marais I was met by a soft spoken woman, whom I later discovered was of Tamilian descent. “Today, I’m going to show you roses,” said Magalie Ayé of Les Balades de Magalie. I hid my aversion to the flower and its cloying sweetness before setting off on a meandering morning stroll.
この記事は Verve の November 2017 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は Verve の November 2017 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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