Travel Life
Les Jardins de Luxembourg
old Esme’s addiction to tutus could be fed with the rails of tulle and the gleam of
St Germain des Pres
satin ribboned ballet slippers, some
reached by shining gilded ladders, others teetering behind glass and gleaming walnut in display cabinets.
Via a few shops and hot chocolate stops, we arrived next at L’Eglise
Saint-Suplice, to see the wonderful, exuberant Delacroix frescoes. And also to marvel at there still being people looking for the Da Vinci code keystone as described in the phenomenally successful novel. For children, the lines between truth and fi ction, memory and myth, the imagination and reality, are constantly being challenged, and never more so than when they can see grown adults crawling around a beautiful church in search of the remnants of a pagan temple that exists only in the mind of Dan Brown and nowhere else.
We couldn’t miss the Cirque d’hiver on
Raff aella Barker and her 12-year-old daughter Esme donned their cultural hats and headed for Paris
At
the end of childhood, on the cusp of teen-dom, children begin to change, and a new dimension can emerge in
parents’ relationship with their off spring – where at last, there is a possibility of doing things we like doing with them and of them liking it too.
Paris for two nights is
perfect. From the moment of arrival at Le Gare du
Nord you become eff ortlessly sophisticated just by association. Paris is immediately European: architecturally utterly diff erent to brick-built sprawling London, with its magnifi cent stone buildings and bridges, formal gardens
from Les Jardins de
Luxembourg where trees stand in ordered lines, to the serenity of Les Jardins des Tuileries where Monet’s exquisite water lily paintings Les Nymphéas hang, bathed in natural light in the Musée de l’Orangerie. It is a city of art and culture and without being in the least heavy handed, it is easy to show this to a child. My daughter and I focussed on Monet, also visiting the Musée Marmottan in the 16th, an enchanting museum devoted to him and some of his side kicks near La Muette metro station.
nc me of h
From there we moved on to
Impressionist
Degas, and headed for the Repetto
ballet store at 51, rue des Francs Bourgeois - 75004 where 12-year-
Saturday night. It is everything that a circus should be from pouncing tigers to sequin-clad tight rope walkers and plumed horses, all brought together in a truly glamorous show conceived and executed by the incredible Bouglione family, (110 Rue Amelot 75011). I love staying in St-Germain-des-Prés for
the tall, narrow hotels that have not changed for years. Hotel de la Université is one; Hotel d’Angleterre is another. Get a room with a view over the leaded roof tops and your children will feel that they are in The AristoCats movie, or the stories of Madeleine. Sunday lunch at Brasserie Lipp at the heart
of St Germain is a wonderful glamorous way to end a weekend in Paris. The sawdust shaken on to the fl oors to soak up spilt wine is a memory my daughter holds from a trip to Paris when she was tiny; and still she enjoys the wonderful disdain of the waiters taking our orders, especially if she is uncouth enough to order Coca Cola to drink. Heading back under the Channel, we do
Esme’s homework on the Eurostar, and the French vocab test is now no problem. Happy memories indeed!
www.fi rstelevenmagazine.co.uk Michaelmas 2011 FirstEleven 69
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