Paris, in 48 Hours

Monet, steak frites and the luxury of having no choice

The following morning we were up early, fuelled by little more than coffee and a croissant, and still rather full from the night before. We had a mission: to get to the Musée de l’Orangerie early. We hadn’t managed to secure pre-booked tickets, so we joined the queue with the hope of seeing Monet’s Nymphéas.

It was worth the wait. It is meditative standing in front of Monet’s great curved panels; the scale, the colour, the light and the way the paintings seem to envelop you make it very easy to forget that you are inside a museum at all. I could have stayed much longer.

By lunchtime, we were ready to eat again. We headed to Le Relais de l’Entrecôte, conveniently close to our hotel. I love the concept because it is wonderfully simple: steak, frites and salad. First comes a delicious French green salad, and in my opinion, the dressing deserves particular recognition. I am almost certain there was walnut oil involved. Then comes the only real decision you need to make: how do you like your steak cooked? After that, sit back and relax. The steak arrives with the famous sauce and the frites, followed by another serving. There is no enormous menu to navigate, no endless list of decisions to make. The luxury, it turns out, is not having to make many decisions. You simply eat. And then there is the wine. One white, one red, one rosé and one beer. You choose whichever takes your fancy and carry on. We finished with a shared crème brûlée and espressos.

The Impressionists, again

After lunch we made our way to the Musée d’Orsay for our pre-booked time slot and headed upstairs to the Impressionists. It was crowded, very crowded, but once we were upstairs among the Impressionists, we stopped noticing.

What struck both of us was the extraordinary detail in the paintings. You need to get close to really see it: the individual brushstrokes, the layers of colour, the tiny marks that somehow become a whole landscape when you step back. With Seurat, there are paintings made up of what seem, close up, to be nothing more than dots. From a distance, they become something entirely different. It made us marvel at the sheer talent of these artists, and also at the strange vulnerability of what they did. They put their way of seeing the world onto canvas without knowing, of course, what their work would ultimately mean or the extraordinary place it would occupy in the history of art.

And then there was the building itself. The Musée d’Orsay was once a railway station, built in 1900 to bring travellers from the south-west of France into the heart of Paris, until longer trains eventually made its platforms too short. Standing beneath that enormous roof, with its great clock and vast central hall, it was easy to imagine the trains arriving here. It made me think about how different train travel must once have felt, when arriving in a city could mean stepping into a building as magnificent as this. By this point, we’d already packed a remarkable amount into the weekend and, naturally, there was still dinner.

Seeing Paris from the Seine

We had booked a Champagne cruise on the Seine, which I admit I approached with slightly low expectations. A tourist boat. A commentary. A glass of champagne. I wasn’t expecting it to be one of the highlights. I was wrong. From the river, Paris has an entirely different perspective. The buildings, bridges and monuments reveal themselves differently when you are looking at them from the water, and the commentary was genuinely interesting rather than simply filling the silence.

With a glass of champagne in hand, watching Notre-Dame, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower pass by, I found myself wondering why I’d been quite so sceptical. Sometimes the obvious tourist experience is obvious for a reason. The heat was still intense, so by the time we reached the hotel we were more than ready for a shower and a change of clothes.

Le Christine

Then came Le Christine. This was, without question, the gastronomic highlight of the weekend. Tucked into a quiet street in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it was the sort of restaurant where everything felt considered without ever feeling overly formal. What made the evening so memorable was not simply one particular dish. It was the whole team: the kitchen, the sommeliers and the front of house. Everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing and, importantly, how to make it look effortless.

And, of course, I noticed the glassware! Lehmann, there it was again. Earlier that day, on our walk to the Seine, we’d happened upon the Lehmann Paris shop, so I hadn’t expected to see the glassware again quite so soon, this time on the table at Le Christine. It was one of those dinners where you don’t want to rush anything. By the time we walked back to the hotel, we were very full, very happy and in no particular hurry to do anything other than enjoy the walk home.

Sunday: shopping, naturally

The next morning we allowed ourselves a slightly later start. It was our shopping day. Our first stop was Galeries Lafayette, where we went straight to the rooftop terrace to take in the view across Paris before heading to the coffee bar overlooking the cosmetics hall. We did some shopping, mostly for James, before making our way to the Galeries Lafayette building dedicated to food. It was impressive, although I had no idea what was waiting for us later.

From there, we headed back across to the Left Bank for lunch at Ralph’s, at the Ralph Lauren flagship on Boulevard Saint-Germain. The setting is extraordinary. It is Ralph Lauren through and through, a grand Parisian courtyard styled to within an inch of its life, from the furniture and planting to the smallest details. And the burger? We were asked how we wanted it cooked, and it arrived juicy, beautifully cooked and quite simply delicious. A knife and fork were provided, so there was no messy business. This is Ralph Lauren, after all. We had champagne with the burgers, Ruinart, which I have to say worked rather beautifully.

Then we headed to Le Bon Marché and, more importantly, La Grande Épicerie. And this was the discovery that really stopped me in my tracks.

La Grande Épicerie

I was in awe. The range, the quality, the presentation, the sheer abundance of it all was extraordinary. La Grande Épicerie de Paris is a destination in its own right. But statistics don’t really explain the experience. You have to walk through it slowly, look at everything, taste things, notice the presentation and imagine what you could cook with it all. I have to admit, I was a little jealous.

And perhaps that was what struck me most. It wasn’t simply the choice. It was the pleasure people seemed to take in being there, looking, choosing and discovering. It felt joyful.

And then it was time to go

By Sunday afternoon the heat had become intense again, so we retreated briefly to the hotel lobby for a Coke with a slice of lime, and a quick freshen-up before heading back towards Gare du Nord. A couple of earlier train delays had made the station particularly crowded, but thankfully our Eurostar left on time. A little over two hours later, we were back in London.

Was 48 hours enough? Of course not. There were things I would have loved to do but simply didn’t have time for: more wandering around the Left Bank, more galleries, more shops, more long lunches, more time simply sitting somewhere with a glass of wine and watching Paris go by.

But that’s the thing about Paris. You could spend 48 days there and still have places you hadn’t seen, restaurants you hadn’t tried and streets you hadn’t walked. Perhaps that’s why a short trip works so well. You don’t try to do everything. You choose a few things, follow your appetite and see where the day takes you.

We ate too much, drank champagne, saw a lot of art and walked a lot: 40,000-plus steps, to be precise. We came home, already thinking about the next time. Forty-eight hours was nowhere near enough. But what a wonderful way to spend them!