Day 7: Jardin du Luxembourg, Shopping, Snails, and Mikey Plays Boules

The night before, we talked to Amanda about child friendly restaurants in Paris. By child friendly, I don’t mean places where enormous mice riding skateboards serve pizza, I just meant cafes where Mikey could get up from the table and run around from time to time, brasseries that weren’t perched on the edge of busy roads. The perfect place occurred to her while we were sitting at Cremerie – Restaurant Polidor: we needed to go Café Paul. The food was excellent, but more to the point, it was located on the periphery of a quiet trafficless square called the Place Dauphin in the quiet island where Paris was born in the middle of the Seine between the banks, the Île de la Cité.

So we had a second date with Amanda scheduled.

In the morning, though, we packed up from the Hotel du Danube, and left our bags – including our expensive puppies – in the lobby, while we went to the Jardin du Luxembourg. We knew they had a playground and a pony carousel, and when we told Mikey, he couldn’t wait. After a few minutes of searching the typically French, gorgeous, well-organized grounds, we found among the chestnut trees, the carousel, but no ponies. At the grounds to the playground were the ominous words, “Les poneys sont absents pour une durée indéterminé.” Uh oh, time for a distraction from disappointment!

Fortunately, the playground proved to be diverting not only to Mikey, but to us as well. Mikey was certainly the only child wearing a tee-shirt and jeans – all the French children played in the sand and fell off slides into the dirt in the hautest of finery and frippery. We got to drink nuclear espresso, that what the French call “café” out of whisper thin plastic cups which melted in our hands, and watch the nannies and their charges. And we got to learn that regardless of culture and language, playground push-fests and melt-downs are universal.

We took a taxi back to our hotel on the left bank to collect our luggage and then moved across to the Hotel Daniel on the right bank. As comfortable and friendly as the Hotel du Danube had been, the Hotel Daniel was even more so, and the junior suite was just what we required. We had lunch in the restaurant with Marie Segal, a fabulous PR agent and an old friend from Ian’s misspent youth, and then we felt it was time to give the right bank shopping some equal time.

Fortunately, Mikey crashed in his stroller mid-way to the Galeries Lafayette, so we were able to shop just for ourselves, all up and down the Boulevard Haussmann. It was very necessary because we packed light, and after seven days, two pairs of pants are not enough. Especially when you have had a 2-year-old, frequently one who is eating or needs a diaper change, on your lap 50% of the day.

The kid slept so soundly, we were even able to investigate the Bordeauxtheque in the Galeries Lafayette, where fabled vintages are displayed like modern relics in black plexiglass in a hushed, cathedral like atmosphere.

Mikey did not wake up until we were at home, post-shower, with new clothes on, drinking our new wine, ready to head out to meet Amanda. Of course, he was a little predictably tetchy, and difficult to motivate, so we were about a half an hour late. Fortunately, Amanda had some entertainment, watching the boules players and the Tai Chi in front of the white marble Palais de Justice.

Dinner was great, and Mikey had his first snails, which he loved (garlic and butter, what's not to love?) though that wasn’t quite enough to distract him. While I caught up with Amanda, Ian took Mikey out in the square, where he interrupted a group of exceptionally attractive French teens playing a game of boules.

Mikey charmed them, and they showed him how to play.



“Is he having a good time in Paris?” one of the young ladies asked Ian, after everyone survived Mikey hurling a two pound metal sphere this way and that.

“He loves Paris.”

“And Paris is honored to have him.”

Yes, it was a bit of Gallic hyperbole, but really, truly, what’s wrong with that?