PARIS WITHOUT RESERVATIONS
A very fashionable car in one of the most fashionable cities in Europe, teeming with wonderfully fashionable people. The Tigra Sport Rouge could have been made for Paris' deeply chic street life.
WORDS BY MAIA SISSONS
PICTURES BY JUSTIN LEIGHTON
I’ve come by Tigra Sport Rouge to Europe’s most romantic capital – in search of a little liberté, egalité and fraternité.
The liberté wasn’t hard to come by; we threw overnight bags into the Tigra’s roomy boot and headed for Dover. England was grey and drizzly, so the roof stayed up, keeping us cocooned all the way to the coast. And the miles from Calais to Paris passed quickly, purring along the autoroute listening to my MP3 player, plugged neatly into the centre console.
There’s no better way for a visitor to start a weekend in Paris than with a quiet cocktail at the Ritz. So we zip around Place de la Concorde to park in an underground car park in the Place Vendome - then make the mistake of going through the front entrance of the Ritz. To find the bar, we have to pass more bling than you’d find in a Dubai shopping mall. Better to find the discreet side entrance on Rue Cambon, and imagine that you are Ernest Hemingway being brought to ‘Le Petit Bar’ for the first time by
F Scott Fitzgerald in 1926. Hemingway went on to spend so much time here that they renamed the bar after him. I can understand why he loved it so much. It’s intimate, luxurious and louche, and charming master of mixology Colin Peter Field brings us two of the most delicious cocktails I’ve ever tasted.
On Saturday morning, we head off with hood down for breakfast at Ladurée. This heavenly patisserie on the Rue Royale (complete with angels painted on the ceiling) has windows piled high with pyramids of pastel-coloured macaroons. Despite the opulent surroundings, a breakfast of café crème and sumptuous chocolate pistachio croissants only sets us back a few euros, and sets us up for some serious window shopping on the left bank.
Just over the river, in the 7th arrondissement, we hunt for the chicest shops St Germain has to offer. The Rue des Saint-Peres is great for smaller designer labels. We swing by Le Bon Marché, a beautifully restored department store first opened in 1848, for a ride on its spectacular escalators and a browse in its mouth-watering food hall.
A friend has strongly recommended lunch in the ‘station buffet’ at the Gare de Lyon, where we are utterly unprepared for the jaw-dropping splendour of ‘Le Train Bleu’. Perched above the tracks that head all the way to the Côte d’Azur sits a splendid dining room filled with frescoes from 1900 that depict all the alluring destinations that the route of the fabled Blue Train had to offer. Huge arched windows flood the place with light, and add an extra sparkle to fastidiously polished glasses and silverware. We’re shown to our table, where Justin is looking as expectant as an E M Forster character about to depart on his Grand Tour.