May 24, 2009
36 Hours in Prague
By EVAN RAIL
THE bad news about Prague is that your guidebook is probably already out of date, as some of its brightest and best attractions have appeared only in the last couple of years and several old favorites have been recently renovated, redecorated or otherwise renewed. The good news is that you now have another reason to go off the beaten track and explore the city’s courtyards and cobblestone lanes. With luck, you’ll find something that no one else has discovered.
Friday
3 p.m.
1) GREAT GLASS
The soaring stained-glass windows of St. Vitus Cathedral have inspired generations of the faithful and visitors alike. For an up-close glimpse of original windows and the master craftsmen who made them, visit Old Town’s overlooked Umelecke Sklenarstvi Jiricka-Coufal (U Milosrdnych 14; 420-737-666-851; www.vitraz.cz), an “artisanal glassworks” where some of the cathedral’s windows were produced and are now restored. Replicas of historical windows are available for purchase. A reproduction of a medieval window depicting Charlemagne, resplendent in knight’s armor and wielding a sword, costs 30,000 koruna (about $1,500 at 20 koruna to $1).
7 p.m.
2) DINING HOUSE
One of Prague’s most prominent modern constructions is the Dancing House, a curvy riverfront building designed by Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunic, resembling a couple — often called Fred and Ginger — in midstep. In March, the restaurant Céleste (Rasinovo Nabrezi 80; 420-221-984-160; www.celesterestaurant.cz) opened on the top floor of the building, with views of the river and Prague Castle. Served alongside the panoramic scene are the inventive creations of Gwendal Le Ruyet, like an intensely flavored lettuce velouté, with chunks of garlicky escargots and aromatic tarragon foam, costing 275 koruna; a recent entree of skate in a light green crab sauce was 590 koruna.
10 p.m.
3) SKY HIGH
Most hotel bars in Prague are forgettable, lacking locals and atmosphere, but not so Cloud 9 (Pobrezni 1; 420-224-842-999; www.cloud9.cz), a sky-high lounge that opened in the Hilton Prague last September. (Be aware that the Hilton Prague and the similarly named Hilton Prague Old Town are not the same.) Long and spacious, the bar has many intimate nooks and corners, along with spectacular views of the Vltava River and city rooftops. Though house cocktails like the Mystic (vodka, fresh lime, brown sugar and plenty of peppery, house-made ginger syrup; 160 koruna) are excellent, the nonalcoholic “mocktails,” like the Baby Zombie made with guava and citrus juices (80 koruna), and Ginger Rain, with ginger syrup, ginger marmalade and lime (100 koruna), are even more refreshing, and perhaps a better accompaniment to the bar’s finger-food platters (with enough snacks for about four people, 890 and 990 koruna). Normally open until 2 a.m., the party can go much later, as it did when the entire Slavia Praha soccer team showed up to celebrate a player’s birthday recently.
Saturday
10 a.m.
4) MODERN MEMENTOS
Skip the crystal shops and get some unusual souvenirs at Futurista (Soukenicka 8; 420-222-311-453; www.futurista.cz), a new boutique featuring work from local designers. T-shirts bearing crude expressions in Czech and anti-Communist slogans cost around 300 to 500 koruna, while the Czech designer Maxim Velcovsky’s white ceramic “Republica” bowl, shaped like the Czech Republic itself, is 1,590 koruna. If Bohemian glass is a must have, try the Artel Design Shop (Celetna 29, entrance on Rybna; 420-224-815-085; www.artelglass.com), which updates traditional crystal designs with modern colors and shapes, like the asymmetrical “Glacier” bowl by the American designer David Wiseman (82,800 koruna), and 60s-style “Mod” Champagne flutes (5,900 koruna each).
Noon
5) A LITTLE BREAD
Not to be missed are a number of the city’s delicatessens, pastry shops and cafeterias that have been serving lunch and treats since early in the 20th century. Jan Paukert (Narodni trida 17; 420-224-222-615; www.janpaukert.cz) is a 93-year-old deli that claims to have invented the chlebicek, or “little bread,” a popular open-faced sandwich topped with any number of ingredients, including roast beef, ham, egg salad, salami and smoked salmon (19 to 28 koruna each). To burn up some of the calories from lunch, walk a couple of blocks to the Mysak pastry shop (Vodickova 31; 420-731-653-813; www.gallerymysak.cz), which was founded in 1911 and reopened in like-new condition last year. There, you can get the house karamelovy pohar, a bowl of ice cream topped with caramel, chocolate and walnuts, for 120 koruna. Before indulging again, get some more exercise with a 40-minute walk across the Vltava River to the Holesovice district for an apple tart (28 koruna) at the Erhartova Cukrarna (Milady Horakove 56; 420-233-312-148; www.erhartcafe.cz), a 1937-vintage confectionery that was renovated with pitch-perfect period décor in 2007.
4 p.m.
6) ART TOWN
It might not yet rival Venice, but Prague has several new museums, galleries and biennales that have started to position it as a serious forum for modern art. One of the biggest is the Dox Center for Contemporary Art (Osadni 34; 420-224-930-927; www.doxprague.org), which opened more than 30,000 square feet of exhibition space last fall. It has a show opening on June 4 that will include an extensive exhibition from the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. A more intimate space, the three-year-old Hunt Kastner Artworks (Kamenicka 22; 420-233-376-259; www.huntkastner.com) is a single-room gallery. Running through June 6 is an exhibition featuring photographs and installations from the young Czech artist Jiri Thyn.
7:30 p.m.
7) END OF THE LINE
Though the Czech Republic is home to more than 100 breweries, it is challenging to find anything beyond a few international mega-brands in the city center. For a full night of rare brews, take the No. 11 tram out to Namesti bratri Synku, where you will find Zly Casy (Cestmirova 5; 420-604-241-454; www.zlycasy.eu), a pub with a rotating selection of microbrews and hearty Czech pork-with-more-pork fare (entrees, around 90 koruna). On a recent visit, the taps included a fragrant chestnut-honey lager from Milan Rambousek. About five minutes away, the brewpub Pivovar Basta (Taborska 49; 420-261-222-530; www.ubansethu.cz) serves one of the city’s richest and most full-bodied amber lagers (30 koruna a half liter, about a pint), as well as seasonal specials and pickled sausages (44 koruna). To finish up the night, get back on the No. 11 tram and continue out to its terminus at Sporilov, where you’ll find the Prvni Pivni Tramway, or the “first beer tram” (Na Chodovci 1a), a theme pub with three standard beers and one rotating microbrew. Decorated with old tram seats, the pub even has strategically placed tram handrails over the urinals in the men’s bathroom; also in the men’s room: graffiti by the Czech cartoonist Igor Sevcik. Be sure to cover your ears: throughout the night, the bar staff rings an old tram bell when each guest leaves.
Sunday
11 a.m.
8) A TASTE OF AMERICA
Soak up the previous night’s excess with brunch at the newest Bohemia Bagel branch (Dukelskych hrdinu 48; 420-220-806-541; www.bohemiabagel.cz), a life-saving stalwart for the city’s expatriate community and anyone craving a taste of American fare. The menu includes bagel sandwiches, burgers and diner classics like huevos rancheros and pigs in a blanket (full brunch menu, 199 koruna). Once you’re ready to get back on that horse, consider the 1.5-liter pitcher (about 50 ounces) of mimosas, enough for seven friends or one very thirsty individual, for 350 koruna.
THE BASICS
Czech Airlines flies direct to Prague daily from Kennedy International Airport in New York, while Delta will do the same three days a week starting June 18. Many other airlines serve the city via connections in Europe, and one-stops can be cheaper. A recent online search found nonstop round-trip prices from New York in June from $777 to $1,219.
A taxi from Ruzyne Airport takes about 40 minutes to the city center and costs about 600 koruna, $30 at 20 Czech koruna to $1. Or you can take bus No. 119 from just outside the arrivals lounge to Dejvicka, the terminus station, and transfer to the metro or a tram from there, all for a single 26-koruna ticket.
The newest splashy hotel is the 160-room Sheraton Prague Charles Square (Zitna 8; 420-225-999-999; www.sheraton.com/prague), which opened in March. Doubles in June start at 3,500 koruna, or $175. A special offer through June includes airport transfer, welcome drinks, flowers and dinner for two in the hotel restaurant, from 6,000 koruna a night, with a two-night minimum .
Generally less expensive but still stylish is the Hotel Yasmin (Politickych veznu 12; 420-234-100-100; www.hotel-yasmin.cz). Opened in 2006, it has 196 rooms decorated by the local designer Barbora Skorpilova. Doubles officially start at 149 euros, about $207 at $1.39 to the euro, but online specials in June were recently as low as 117 euros.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Paris Food Shopping - Gourmet article
STAFF PICK: TRAVEL
Gourmet staffer Erica Reynolds reminisces on her weekly jaunts to a Parisian outdoor market.
When I lived at 71 rue de Lyon, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, I would wake up on Sunday mornings – a day when mainstream commerce shuts down – and stroll with a friend through Place de la Bastille towards the Marche to buy groceries for the week. Choosing from the best artichokes, cauliflower, rotisserie chickens, pastries, cheeses, strawberries, yogurts, and even honey, I would count out Euros in my change purse and head over, wicker basket in hand, to stock up on seasonal goodies.
It is dangerous to shop on an empty stomach first thing on a Sunday morning. To tide myself over, I’d pick up a croissant aux amandes at the local patisserie– the best ones are moist and with a high ratio of almond paste to bread, which is not at all browned - and with adequate almond slivers piled on top. Balancing my basket and pastry, I’d walk up the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, eyeing the stands to see what looked appealing.
Sometimes, instead of a croissant, I’d opt for a quick Lebanese bread-like snack made with green paste from thyme called “zatr”, and a lemon-yougurt sauce called “lebneh,” heated on a rounded steel skillet at the stands. The thin dough of the bread, seasoned with thyme as well, would be warm with air pockets, and wouldn’t weigh heavily in my stomach.
FEATURES < PREVIOUS
STAFF PICK: TRAVEL
...continued
Entering the Boulevard, my attention would first be drawn to the pinkish-white fraises (strawberries). Even when perfectly ripe, they are slightly whiter at the base than American ones, and a bit smaller in scale. They come from Morocco, as do bananas and citrus. One can’t necessarily tell from looking at them whether they are ripe or not, so you just have to try them.
Next stop would be the dairy stands where I would choose a sweet, liquid yougurt, sold in glass bottles with a foil covering the top. It tasted almost like a smoothie – and is perfect for dipping the strawberries in. Greek yogurt, unsweetened, with fresh dates that have their own crystallized sugars is another satisfying snack I’d buy. A Camembert or an aged comte, a hard cheese to snack on was also a common purchase. It goes with most wine and isn’t too heavily perfumed.
Fresh farm eggs and a whole poulet (chicken), roasted in an herbed butter on rotisserie stands were my most important purchases. To sustain myself throughout the week, I’d carve off certain parts of the bird, applying dabs of French “moutarde” later in the week as the bird dried out – but it would usually last all week. Once, I experimented with buying a rabbit, but regretted it shortly after. The only way to develop your own taste is to be daring!
Lastly, (as the French take their salad at the end of a meal, to help with the digestive process), I would buy my vegetables - several courgettes, some endives, and some butter lettuce, along with tomatoes and an onion. Chopped onions, courgettes, and tomatoes, parsley, and orzo, along with a salad dressing made from Maggi were an easy meal to prepare.
FEATURES < PREVIOUS
STAFF PICK: TRAVEL
...continued
Although I tried to mimic the other Frenchwomen out and about, who were preparing to cook for a large family, I usually just went by what pleased my fancy at the moment – and often picked up something indulgent as a can of foie gras or a prepared jar of cassoulet – as either is the perfect addition to bring to a friend’s dinner party.
Walk several blocks towards the Marais to the wine store NYSA on rue Bourg Tibourg for an excellent but affordably priced selection of wines as they pertain to foods (paired with salmon, cassoulet, foie gras). Be sure to pick up a bottle opener similar to “The Rabbit” which retails in the US for $110. You can find it for under 30 Euros at the stands.
For more information on NYSA, visit www.nysa.fr
Gourmet staffer Erica Reynolds reminisces on her weekly jaunts to a Parisian outdoor market.
When I lived at 71 rue de Lyon, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, I would wake up on Sunday mornings – a day when mainstream commerce shuts down – and stroll with a friend through Place de la Bastille towards the Marche to buy groceries for the week. Choosing from the best artichokes, cauliflower, rotisserie chickens, pastries, cheeses, strawberries, yogurts, and even honey, I would count out Euros in my change purse and head over, wicker basket in hand, to stock up on seasonal goodies.
It is dangerous to shop on an empty stomach first thing on a Sunday morning. To tide myself over, I’d pick up a croissant aux amandes at the local patisserie– the best ones are moist and with a high ratio of almond paste to bread, which is not at all browned - and with adequate almond slivers piled on top. Balancing my basket and pastry, I’d walk up the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, eyeing the stands to see what looked appealing.
Sometimes, instead of a croissant, I’d opt for a quick Lebanese bread-like snack made with green paste from thyme called “zatr”, and a lemon-yougurt sauce called “lebneh,” heated on a rounded steel skillet at the stands. The thin dough of the bread, seasoned with thyme as well, would be warm with air pockets, and wouldn’t weigh heavily in my stomach.
FEATURES < PREVIOUS
STAFF PICK: TRAVEL
...continued
Entering the Boulevard, my attention would first be drawn to the pinkish-white fraises (strawberries). Even when perfectly ripe, they are slightly whiter at the base than American ones, and a bit smaller in scale. They come from Morocco, as do bananas and citrus. One can’t necessarily tell from looking at them whether they are ripe or not, so you just have to try them.
Next stop would be the dairy stands where I would choose a sweet, liquid yougurt, sold in glass bottles with a foil covering the top. It tasted almost like a smoothie – and is perfect for dipping the strawberries in. Greek yogurt, unsweetened, with fresh dates that have their own crystallized sugars is another satisfying snack I’d buy. A Camembert or an aged comte, a hard cheese to snack on was also a common purchase. It goes with most wine and isn’t too heavily perfumed.
Fresh farm eggs and a whole poulet (chicken), roasted in an herbed butter on rotisserie stands were my most important purchases. To sustain myself throughout the week, I’d carve off certain parts of the bird, applying dabs of French “moutarde” later in the week as the bird dried out – but it would usually last all week. Once, I experimented with buying a rabbit, but regretted it shortly after. The only way to develop your own taste is to be daring!
Lastly, (as the French take their salad at the end of a meal, to help with the digestive process), I would buy my vegetables - several courgettes, some endives, and some butter lettuce, along with tomatoes and an onion. Chopped onions, courgettes, and tomatoes, parsley, and orzo, along with a salad dressing made from Maggi were an easy meal to prepare.
FEATURES < PREVIOUS
STAFF PICK: TRAVEL
...continued
Although I tried to mimic the other Frenchwomen out and about, who were preparing to cook for a large family, I usually just went by what pleased my fancy at the moment – and often picked up something indulgent as a can of foie gras or a prepared jar of cassoulet – as either is the perfect addition to bring to a friend’s dinner party.
Walk several blocks towards the Marais to the wine store NYSA on rue Bourg Tibourg for an excellent but affordably priced selection of wines as they pertain to foods (paired with salmon, cassoulet, foie gras). Be sure to pick up a bottle opener similar to “The Rabbit” which retails in the US for $110. You can find it for under 30 Euros at the stands.
For more information on NYSA, visit www.nysa.fr
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Paris Gardens Parks Guide
David Brabyn for The New York Times
Parisians can dine at garden cafes like La Muscade at the Palais Royal.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: June 29, 2008
NEXT to the Palais de la Découverte, just off the Champs-Élysées, is a flight-of-fancy sculpture of the 19th-century poet Alfred de Musset daydreaming about his former lovers. As art goes, the expanse of white marble is pretty mediocre, and its sculptor, Alphonse de Moncel, little-remembered. For me, however, it is a crucial marker. To its right is a path with broken stone steps that lead down into one of my favorite places in Paris, a tiny stage-set called Jardin de la Vallée Suisse.
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Paris, France Part of the Champs-Élysées’ gardens, this “Swiss Valley” was built from scratch in the late 19th century by the park designer Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand. It is a lovely illusion, where nothing is quite what it appears at first sight. The rocks that form the pond and waterfall are sculptured from cement; so is the “wooden” footbridge. But the space — 1.7 acres of semitamed wilderness in one of the most urban swaths of Paris — has lured me, over and over again. My only companions are the occasional dog walker and the police woman making her rounds.
On a park bench there, I am enveloped by evergreens, maples, bamboo, lilacs and ivy. There are lemon trees; a Mexican orange; a bush called a wavyleaf silktassel, with drooping flowers, that belongs in an Art Nouveau painting; and another whose leaves smell of caramel in the fall. A 100-year-old weeping beech shades a pond whose waterfall pushes away the noise of the streets above. The pond, fed by the Seine, can turn murky, but the slow-moving carp don’t seem to mind, nor does the otter that surfaces from time to time.
The Swiss Valley is one of the most unusual of Paris’s more than 400 gardens and parks, woods and squares. Much grander showcases include wooded spaces like the Bois de Vincennes on the east of the city and the Bois de Boulogne on the west, and celebrations of symmetry in the heart of Paris like the Tuileries and the Luxembourg.
But I prefer the squares and parks in quiet corners and out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Many are the legacy of former President Jacques Chirac. In the 18 years he served as mayor of Paris, he put his personal stamp on his city by painting its hidden corners green.
“He took some of the pathetic, shabby squares and gardens and transformed and adorned them,” said Claude Bureau, one of the city’s great garden historians who was chief gardener of the Jardin des Plantes for more than two decades. “He appreciated beauty — of women, of nature.”
Paris’s current mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has taken over the task. In his seven years in the job, he has created 79 acres of what City Hall calls “new green spaces.” Just this month, he transformed the open space in front of City Hall into an “ephemeral garden,” a nearly 31,000-square-foot temporary installation of 6,000 plants and trees, and even a mini-lake.
Intimate, lightly trafficked and often quirky, the small gardens of Paris can be ideal places to rest and to read. The trick is to find them. You can consult “Paris: 100 Jardins Insolites” (“Paris: 100 Unusual Gardens”), a guide by Martine Dumond whose color photos make discovery for the non-French speaker a pleasure, or explore various Web sites like www.paris-walking-tours.com/parisgardens.html. Or you can simply wander on foot, confident that around the next corner there will be something new.
You’ll find spaces for listening to a concert or watching a puppet show (like the Parc de Bagatelle in the 16th Arrondissement); church gardens (like the one enclosing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Seventh Arrondissement); gardens with vegetable patches (like the Jardin Catherine-Labouré in the Seventh Arrondissement); oriental gardens (like the one at Unesco headquarters in the Seventh Arrondissement that was a gift of the Japanese government). There are gardens with beehives, bird preserves, out-of-fashion roses, chessboards, playgrounds, menageries, panoramic views, even a rain forest and a farm. Green spaces adjoin cemeteries, embassies, movie theaters and hotels.
Even hospitals.
I doubt that most visitors to Notre-Dame Cathedral know that inside the nearby Hôtel-Dieu complex, which is still a working hospital, is a formal garden-courtyard with sculptured 30-year-old boxwoods. The hospital’s gardener replants much of the space every May — with fuchsias, sage, impatiens and Indian roses.
From the top of the flight of steps that cuts across the garden, you can find yourself all alone, looking out through the hospital’s windows to the tourist hordes outside. Every few months, the hospital’s interns choose a different costume for the male statue at the back — at the moment, he is Snow White.
(It was Mr. Bureau who told me that some of the most peaceful gardens belong to hospitals. Gardens help cure patients more quickly, he said).
The Square René Viviani on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame is another spot that is easy to miss. But this tranquil square features what is said to be the oldest tree in Paris — a false acacia brought to France from Virginia in 1601, and now shored up with concrete posts. Sitting on a park bench in one corner yields one of the best views in Paris — Notre-Dame on the right and St.-Julien-le-Pauvre, a tiny church built in the same era on the left.
And then there are the gardens that are the back or front yards of museums. For instance, at the cafe-garden of the Petit-Palais— with its palm and banana trees and sculptures and mosaic floors lit from below — a half dozen marble tables and metal chairs offer the ideal setting to watch the museum’s stone walls change from buff to tawny yellow as the sun moves.
Inside the museum is a portrait of Alphand (whose park designs include the Bois de Boulogne, the Parc Monceau and the Parc Montsouris, as well as the Vallée Suisse) in a top hat, his pince-nez hanging from his black overcoat.
And then there are country settings like the garden of the Musée de la Vie Romantique, once the home of the 19th-century artist Ary Sheffer, at the end of a narrow path at 16, rue Chaptal in the Ninth Arrondissement. There, you can sit among the poppies, foxglove and roses and sip tea (a cafe opens in the summer) and pretend to be George Sand, who lived nearby, and whose personal effects have been assembled in a reconstructed drawing room inside (even a lock of her hair).
On the other side of town, behind an alley at 100, bis, rue d’Assas in the Sixth Arrondissement, is the garden of the Zadkine Museum, which was once the home and atelier of the 20th-century Russian-born sculptor Ossip Zadkine. The sculpture-filled garden is much the same today as when he worked in wood and granite under its trees. “Come and see my pleasure house, and you’ll understand how much a man’s life can be changed by a pigeon house or by a tree,” he once wrote to a friend.
But gardens are not just museum pieces; they are active, integral parts of neighborhoods. For a bit of entertainment — even drama — on a sleepy weekend afternoon, I sometimes walk over to the Square Blomet in the 15th Arrondissement. It is the headquarters of the Union Bouliste, where games of boules are played with such verve that they continue under spotlights late at night.
The ivy covering the metal walls of the field is so old that the leaves have grown up to six inches wide. At the end of a long park-bench-lined corridor sits a little-known bronze sculpture by Joan Miró, who lived in poverty down the street in the atelier of a fellow Catalan sculptor.
On spring and summer Sundays, there is even more excitement at the Jardin Tino Rossi, a sliver along the Seine that turns into an impromptu dance-a-thon. For more than two decades, the informal group of singers and dancers that has been a fixture at the Rue Mouffetard outdoor Sunday market moves to Tino Rossi, along the Quai St.-Bernard, to party. After a wine-filled picnic, they take over one of the amphitheaters, and to the music of accordion, violin and saxophone, they sing and dance the musette until midnight. The star couple one recent Sunday was an older man, in a white shirt and shoes and Champagne-colored trousers, and his partner, a redhead in white ruffles and red sequined slippers.
For quiet magic, Paris insiders pass the time on the lawn and benches of the Square du Vert-Galant, a pointy-shaped spit of land that reminds me of the deck of a cruise ship. The westernmost tip of the Île de la Cité, it offers the Louvre on the right, the dome of the Institut de France on the left, the river on both sides and straight ahead.
The best way to access it is down two flights of stairs at the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf. It was there, in the 1991 film “Les Amants du Pont Neuf” (released in the United States as “The Lovers on the Bridge”) that Juliette Binoche, as a homeless artist who is going blind, struggles to paint her companion’s portrait.
Even the city’s large, formal gardens proclaim hidden spaces. The vast Luxembourg Garden can overwhelm with too many joggers, sunbathers, musicians, newspaper readers, pony riders and tulip admirers. But find the 17th-century Fountain of the Medicis, named after Marie de Medicis (Louis XIV’s grandmother), an oasis of calm and shade inspired by the city of Florence and built on her instructions.
I am not much of a gardener, and the Jardin des Plantes in the Fifth Arrondissement, with its greenhouses and odd species and identifying labels, seemed too much like work. Until I met Mr. Bureau. He told me how his mother was a concierge in the neighborhood, and that he took his first baby steps in the vast garden. It was there, in fact, that he met his wife. She was a 17-year-old high school student, he a 21-year-old gardener fresh from military service. It was raining, and he offered her shelter in the gardener’s hut.
“Women always love gardeners,” he said. “We speak of roses and perfume. We can easily get their attention.”
He was readily persuaded to show off its secret corners, the gardens within the garden. After pointing out a Lebanese cedar planted in 1734, he took me up a spiraling stone walkway to a pergola of iron, copper, bronze, lead and even gold that is France’s oldest metal decorative construction.
Then we entered a concrete tunnel beneath the main garden that led to the Jardin Alpin, a craggy, flowering space that houses species from mountainous areas around the world. Deep inside is a valley with a stream and a leafy canopy that only the strongest beams of light can penetrate. "Here,” Mr. Bureau said, “is where lovers come to hide.”
EARLY on a recent morning, I went walking around the 18th Arrondissement with François Jousse, City Hall’s main lighting engineer (and a self-appointed expert on Paris), to explore more of the city’s little-known gardens, ones I had never come across in the six years I have lived in Paris. There, as in other parts of the city, squares and parks were built in a wave of democratization in the 19th century.
Mr. Jousse showed me the Square Carpeaux, where working-class families bring their kids and where table tennis is played on permanent tables. A white statue of a woman whose arm was broken off looks over the space; a pergola sits in the center of the square.
“I love this place for what it represents: an old, authentic Paris neighborhood meeting place,” Mr. Jousse said. “I call it the anti-Luxembourg.”
We stopped by the Parc de la Turlure, a series of discreet spaces that form a sort of garden-apartment — a living room of grass, a corridor with a tilleul (linden) arcade, a “bedroom” that seems to belong to oiled women in bikinis and another for boules-playing. Abutting the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, the park has a small amphitheater that faces a wall of rushing water.
From there, we headed to the wilderness of the Jardin Sauvage St.-Vincent, a 16,000-square-foot space that since 1985 has been designated by the city as a “wild” garden, where insecticides and artificial watering are banned, and some of the most unexpected vegetation in Paris — artemisias, white nettles, wild blackberries — can be found. Unfortunately, it is open only six hours on Saturdays from April through October. Sometimes not even then. It was closed that day.
But that disappointment led to another discovery: a tree- and bird-filled garden at the Musée de Montmartre just around the block at 12, rue Cortot, where Renoir painted “The Garden in the Rue Cortot, Montmartre,” an 1876 work that now hangs in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. The Montmartre museum itself is in what was once a 17th-century abbey. Its collection includes photographs, posters, paintings and manuscripts documenting Montmartre’s 2,000-year history.
One room, called “Party Time,” is devoted to the laissez-faire mentality of the neighborhood when it was not part of Paris proper. “Outside the walls of the city, wine is cheaper and women are less shy,” reads an information panel. From a window there, you can look down into a working vineyard no bigger than a basketball court, lovingly adorned with hostas, ferns, pansies and primrose. Purple phlox spill over a wall; wisteria drapes over a fence. (Its grapes, harvested every fall, are said to make the most expensive bad wine in the city.)
Mr. Jousse left his favorite for last: les Jardins du Ruisseau, which are not really gardens at all, at least not in the classic sense. They are a series of narrow spaces along a defunct railway track heading east out of Paris where residents have planted flowers, fruit trees, vegetables and herbs in pots.
You can look down into the space — and at its bold graffiti-painted walls. Except for special events or tours organized by City Hall, the metal door leading to a staircase down into the “gardens” is padlocked. But the 300 members of the garden association have keys.
So Mr. Jousse and I stopped by the Rez-de-Chaussée bistro at 65, rue Letort a few blocks away, and the owner, Thierry Cayla, gave us a key. Over lunch at the bistro, we joked that perhaps Mr. Cayla should turn the gardens into a tourist attraction by preparing picnic baskets for visitors.
But then, at 16.90 euros for a three-course meal, you would miss the chance for one of the best bistro bargains in Paris.
WHERE TO FIND THE FLOWERS
The locations and summer hours for some of Paris’s hidden gardens:
Vallée Suisse is in the Garden of the Champs-Élysées, at the junction of the Cours de la Reine, Cours Albert 1er and Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eighth Arrondissement. Open daily 24 hours.
Jardin Tino Rossi, Quai St.-Bernard, Fifth Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to dusk, and Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to dusk.
Jardin Catherine-Labouré, 29, rue de Babylone, Seventh Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The Japanese garden at Unesco headquarters, 7, place Fontenoy, Seventh Arrondissement, is open by reservation only; call 33-1-45-68-03-59.
Clos Montmartre, 14-18 rue des Saules, 18th Arrondissement; open only during the grape harvest in September.
Garden of the Hôtel-Dieu, 1, place du Parvis Notre Dame, Fourth Arrondissement; 33-1-42-34-82-34; open daily 24 hours.
Square René Viviani, 2, rue du Fouarre, Fifth Arrondissement; Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Petit-Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Eighth Arrondissement; 33-1-53-43-40-00; the garden is open every day except Monday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Musée de la Vie Romantique, Hôtel Scheffer-Renan, 16, rue Chaptal, Ninth Arrondissement; 33-1-55-31-95-67; the garden is open every day except Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Musée Zadkine, 100 bis, rue d’Assas, Sixth Arrondissement; 33-1-55-42-77-20. The garden is open daily except Monday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
L’Union Bouliste du 15ème, 43, rue Blomet, 15th Arrondissement; 33-1-45-66-87-21; through Aug. 31, open Monday to Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Jardin des Plantes has several entrances: Rue Auguste Conte, Rue Cuvier, Rue Buffon, Rue Geoffroy-St.-Hilaire or the Place Valhubert. Open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 7:45 p.m.; 33-1-40-79-56-01; www.mnhn.fr.
Square Carpeaux, 23, rue Carpeaux, 18th Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Parc de la Turlure, Rue de La Bonne or Rue du Chevalier de la Barre, 18th Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Jardin Sauvage St.-Vincent, Rue St. Vincent, 18th Arrondissement; 33-1-43-28-47-63; open only on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Les jardins du Ruisseau, next to 110, rue du Ruisseau, 18th Arrondissement; www.lesjardinsduruisseau.org, are not generally open to the public; if one of the members of the association is in, it may be open. You can make an appointment by sending an e-mail message to contact@lesjardinsduruisseau.org.
THE COUNTRY LIFE IN THE CITY
From hidden courtyards to tucked-away garden cafes, Paris offers hundreds of dining spots where the verdant surroundings might make you forget you’re in a city.
WHERE TO EAT
La Maison de l’Amérique Latine (217, boulevard St.-Germain, Seventh Arrondissement; 33-1-49-54-75-10; www.mal217.org) serves classic French cuisine in an elegant “jardin à la Française,” tucked behind two 18th-century mansions. Thirty tables under white parasols overlook two acres of manicured lawn. Expect to spend about 55 euros for dinner without wine, about $87 at $1.58 to the euro.
Les Jardins de Bagatelle (Route de Sèvres, 16th Arrondissement; 33-1-40-67-16-49) offers country dining at the edge of the city. Dinner, which might include melon soup, scallops with leek, and lemon tort, averages around 60 euros, with wine.
Le Chalet des Îles (Lac inférieur du Bois de Boulogne, 16th Arrondissement ; 33-1-42-88-04-69; www.lechaletdesiles.net): picture dinner in an island garden, in the middle of a huge park — only a few miles from the center of Paris. This rustic pink-and-green Second Empire chalet with outdoor terraces is surrounded by a lake and reachable by a minute-long boat ride. For about 50 euros, you can dine on lemon-marinated veal carpaccio with vegetables and mozzarella.
Le Saut du Loup (107, rue de Rivoli, First Arrondissement; 33-1-42-25-49-55; www.lesautduloup.com), inside the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, has an outdoor terrace overlooking the Louvre. Lunch might include gazpacho, steak with polenta and ice cream for around 40 euros.
La Muscade (36, rue de Montpensier, First Arrondissement; 33-1-42-97-51-36; www.muscade-palais-royal.com) has 30 or so tables scattered near the garden of the Palais Royal, with a lovely views of the garden’s row of lime trees. A sandwich costs about 10 euros.
Café Lenôtre (10, avenue des Champs-Élysées; Eighth Arrondissement ; 33-1-42-65-85-10; www.lenotre.fr) offers chic snacking in an elegant green setting. A club sandwich with a salad goes for 14.50 euros.
WHERE TO STAY
At the deluxe Hospes Lancaster (7, rue de Berri, Eighth Arrondissement ; 33-1-40-76-40-76; www.hotel-lancaster.fr), not far from the Arc de Triomphe, ask for a room overlooking the courtyard garden. The garden is small, but with its cork oaks and jasmine-embalmed Japanese purity, this is an exquisite refuge. A standard room costs 490 euros.
Hôtel des Grandes Écoles (75, rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Fifth Arrondissement; 33-1-43 26-79-23; www.hotel-grandes-ecoles.com) is in the Latin Quarter. It comprises three houses surrounding a beautiful flower garden. Doubles are 113 to 138 euros.
— Maia De La Baume
ELAINE SCIOLINO is a correspondent for the Paris bureau of The Times.
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Parisians can dine at garden cafes like La Muscade at the Palais Royal.
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: June 29, 2008
NEXT to the Palais de la Découverte, just off the Champs-Élysées, is a flight-of-fancy sculpture of the 19th-century poet Alfred de Musset daydreaming about his former lovers. As art goes, the expanse of white marble is pretty mediocre, and its sculptor, Alphonse de Moncel, little-remembered. For me, however, it is a crucial marker. To its right is a path with broken stone steps that lead down into one of my favorite places in Paris, a tiny stage-set called Jardin de la Vallée Suisse.
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Paris, France Part of the Champs-Élysées’ gardens, this “Swiss Valley” was built from scratch in the late 19th century by the park designer Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand. It is a lovely illusion, where nothing is quite what it appears at first sight. The rocks that form the pond and waterfall are sculptured from cement; so is the “wooden” footbridge. But the space — 1.7 acres of semitamed wilderness in one of the most urban swaths of Paris — has lured me, over and over again. My only companions are the occasional dog walker and the police woman making her rounds.
On a park bench there, I am enveloped by evergreens, maples, bamboo, lilacs and ivy. There are lemon trees; a Mexican orange; a bush called a wavyleaf silktassel, with drooping flowers, that belongs in an Art Nouveau painting; and another whose leaves smell of caramel in the fall. A 100-year-old weeping beech shades a pond whose waterfall pushes away the noise of the streets above. The pond, fed by the Seine, can turn murky, but the slow-moving carp don’t seem to mind, nor does the otter that surfaces from time to time.
The Swiss Valley is one of the most unusual of Paris’s more than 400 gardens and parks, woods and squares. Much grander showcases include wooded spaces like the Bois de Vincennes on the east of the city and the Bois de Boulogne on the west, and celebrations of symmetry in the heart of Paris like the Tuileries and the Luxembourg.
But I prefer the squares and parks in quiet corners and out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Many are the legacy of former President Jacques Chirac. In the 18 years he served as mayor of Paris, he put his personal stamp on his city by painting its hidden corners green.
“He took some of the pathetic, shabby squares and gardens and transformed and adorned them,” said Claude Bureau, one of the city’s great garden historians who was chief gardener of the Jardin des Plantes for more than two decades. “He appreciated beauty — of women, of nature.”
Paris’s current mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has taken over the task. In his seven years in the job, he has created 79 acres of what City Hall calls “new green spaces.” Just this month, he transformed the open space in front of City Hall into an “ephemeral garden,” a nearly 31,000-square-foot temporary installation of 6,000 plants and trees, and even a mini-lake.
Intimate, lightly trafficked and often quirky, the small gardens of Paris can be ideal places to rest and to read. The trick is to find them. You can consult “Paris: 100 Jardins Insolites” (“Paris: 100 Unusual Gardens”), a guide by Martine Dumond whose color photos make discovery for the non-French speaker a pleasure, or explore various Web sites like www.paris-walking-tours.com/parisgardens.html. Or you can simply wander on foot, confident that around the next corner there will be something new.
You’ll find spaces for listening to a concert or watching a puppet show (like the Parc de Bagatelle in the 16th Arrondissement); church gardens (like the one enclosing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Seventh Arrondissement); gardens with vegetable patches (like the Jardin Catherine-Labouré in the Seventh Arrondissement); oriental gardens (like the one at Unesco headquarters in the Seventh Arrondissement that was a gift of the Japanese government). There are gardens with beehives, bird preserves, out-of-fashion roses, chessboards, playgrounds, menageries, panoramic views, even a rain forest and a farm. Green spaces adjoin cemeteries, embassies, movie theaters and hotels.
Even hospitals.
I doubt that most visitors to Notre-Dame Cathedral know that inside the nearby Hôtel-Dieu complex, which is still a working hospital, is a formal garden-courtyard with sculptured 30-year-old boxwoods. The hospital’s gardener replants much of the space every May — with fuchsias, sage, impatiens and Indian roses.
From the top of the flight of steps that cuts across the garden, you can find yourself all alone, looking out through the hospital’s windows to the tourist hordes outside. Every few months, the hospital’s interns choose a different costume for the male statue at the back — at the moment, he is Snow White.
(It was Mr. Bureau who told me that some of the most peaceful gardens belong to hospitals. Gardens help cure patients more quickly, he said).
The Square René Viviani on the Left Bank across from Notre-Dame is another spot that is easy to miss. But this tranquil square features what is said to be the oldest tree in Paris — a false acacia brought to France from Virginia in 1601, and now shored up with concrete posts. Sitting on a park bench in one corner yields one of the best views in Paris — Notre-Dame on the right and St.-Julien-le-Pauvre, a tiny church built in the same era on the left.
And then there are the gardens that are the back or front yards of museums. For instance, at the cafe-garden of the Petit-Palais— with its palm and banana trees and sculptures and mosaic floors lit from below — a half dozen marble tables and metal chairs offer the ideal setting to watch the museum’s stone walls change from buff to tawny yellow as the sun moves.
Inside the museum is a portrait of Alphand (whose park designs include the Bois de Boulogne, the Parc Monceau and the Parc Montsouris, as well as the Vallée Suisse) in a top hat, his pince-nez hanging from his black overcoat.
And then there are country settings like the garden of the Musée de la Vie Romantique, once the home of the 19th-century artist Ary Sheffer, at the end of a narrow path at 16, rue Chaptal in the Ninth Arrondissement. There, you can sit among the poppies, foxglove and roses and sip tea (a cafe opens in the summer) and pretend to be George Sand, who lived nearby, and whose personal effects have been assembled in a reconstructed drawing room inside (even a lock of her hair).
On the other side of town, behind an alley at 100, bis, rue d’Assas in the Sixth Arrondissement, is the garden of the Zadkine Museum, which was once the home and atelier of the 20th-century Russian-born sculptor Ossip Zadkine. The sculpture-filled garden is much the same today as when he worked in wood and granite under its trees. “Come and see my pleasure house, and you’ll understand how much a man’s life can be changed by a pigeon house or by a tree,” he once wrote to a friend.
But gardens are not just museum pieces; they are active, integral parts of neighborhoods. For a bit of entertainment — even drama — on a sleepy weekend afternoon, I sometimes walk over to the Square Blomet in the 15th Arrondissement. It is the headquarters of the Union Bouliste, where games of boules are played with such verve that they continue under spotlights late at night.
The ivy covering the metal walls of the field is so old that the leaves have grown up to six inches wide. At the end of a long park-bench-lined corridor sits a little-known bronze sculpture by Joan Miró, who lived in poverty down the street in the atelier of a fellow Catalan sculptor.
On spring and summer Sundays, there is even more excitement at the Jardin Tino Rossi, a sliver along the Seine that turns into an impromptu dance-a-thon. For more than two decades, the informal group of singers and dancers that has been a fixture at the Rue Mouffetard outdoor Sunday market moves to Tino Rossi, along the Quai St.-Bernard, to party. After a wine-filled picnic, they take over one of the amphitheaters, and to the music of accordion, violin and saxophone, they sing and dance the musette until midnight. The star couple one recent Sunday was an older man, in a white shirt and shoes and Champagne-colored trousers, and his partner, a redhead in white ruffles and red sequined slippers.
For quiet magic, Paris insiders pass the time on the lawn and benches of the Square du Vert-Galant, a pointy-shaped spit of land that reminds me of the deck of a cruise ship. The westernmost tip of the Île de la Cité, it offers the Louvre on the right, the dome of the Institut de France on the left, the river on both sides and straight ahead.
The best way to access it is down two flights of stairs at the equestrian statue of Henri IV on the Pont Neuf. It was there, in the 1991 film “Les Amants du Pont Neuf” (released in the United States as “The Lovers on the Bridge”) that Juliette Binoche, as a homeless artist who is going blind, struggles to paint her companion’s portrait.
Even the city’s large, formal gardens proclaim hidden spaces. The vast Luxembourg Garden can overwhelm with too many joggers, sunbathers, musicians, newspaper readers, pony riders and tulip admirers. But find the 17th-century Fountain of the Medicis, named after Marie de Medicis (Louis XIV’s grandmother), an oasis of calm and shade inspired by the city of Florence and built on her instructions.
I am not much of a gardener, and the Jardin des Plantes in the Fifth Arrondissement, with its greenhouses and odd species and identifying labels, seemed too much like work. Until I met Mr. Bureau. He told me how his mother was a concierge in the neighborhood, and that he took his first baby steps in the vast garden. It was there, in fact, that he met his wife. She was a 17-year-old high school student, he a 21-year-old gardener fresh from military service. It was raining, and he offered her shelter in the gardener’s hut.
“Women always love gardeners,” he said. “We speak of roses and perfume. We can easily get their attention.”
He was readily persuaded to show off its secret corners, the gardens within the garden. After pointing out a Lebanese cedar planted in 1734, he took me up a spiraling stone walkway to a pergola of iron, copper, bronze, lead and even gold that is France’s oldest metal decorative construction.
Then we entered a concrete tunnel beneath the main garden that led to the Jardin Alpin, a craggy, flowering space that houses species from mountainous areas around the world. Deep inside is a valley with a stream and a leafy canopy that only the strongest beams of light can penetrate. "Here,” Mr. Bureau said, “is where lovers come to hide.”
EARLY on a recent morning, I went walking around the 18th Arrondissement with François Jousse, City Hall’s main lighting engineer (and a self-appointed expert on Paris), to explore more of the city’s little-known gardens, ones I had never come across in the six years I have lived in Paris. There, as in other parts of the city, squares and parks were built in a wave of democratization in the 19th century.
Mr. Jousse showed me the Square Carpeaux, where working-class families bring their kids and where table tennis is played on permanent tables. A white statue of a woman whose arm was broken off looks over the space; a pergola sits in the center of the square.
“I love this place for what it represents: an old, authentic Paris neighborhood meeting place,” Mr. Jousse said. “I call it the anti-Luxembourg.”
We stopped by the Parc de la Turlure, a series of discreet spaces that form a sort of garden-apartment — a living room of grass, a corridor with a tilleul (linden) arcade, a “bedroom” that seems to belong to oiled women in bikinis and another for boules-playing. Abutting the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, the park has a small amphitheater that faces a wall of rushing water.
From there, we headed to the wilderness of the Jardin Sauvage St.-Vincent, a 16,000-square-foot space that since 1985 has been designated by the city as a “wild” garden, where insecticides and artificial watering are banned, and some of the most unexpected vegetation in Paris — artemisias, white nettles, wild blackberries — can be found. Unfortunately, it is open only six hours on Saturdays from April through October. Sometimes not even then. It was closed that day.
But that disappointment led to another discovery: a tree- and bird-filled garden at the Musée de Montmartre just around the block at 12, rue Cortot, where Renoir painted “The Garden in the Rue Cortot, Montmartre,” an 1876 work that now hangs in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. The Montmartre museum itself is in what was once a 17th-century abbey. Its collection includes photographs, posters, paintings and manuscripts documenting Montmartre’s 2,000-year history.
One room, called “Party Time,” is devoted to the laissez-faire mentality of the neighborhood when it was not part of Paris proper. “Outside the walls of the city, wine is cheaper and women are less shy,” reads an information panel. From a window there, you can look down into a working vineyard no bigger than a basketball court, lovingly adorned with hostas, ferns, pansies and primrose. Purple phlox spill over a wall; wisteria drapes over a fence. (Its grapes, harvested every fall, are said to make the most expensive bad wine in the city.)
Mr. Jousse left his favorite for last: les Jardins du Ruisseau, which are not really gardens at all, at least not in the classic sense. They are a series of narrow spaces along a defunct railway track heading east out of Paris where residents have planted flowers, fruit trees, vegetables and herbs in pots.
You can look down into the space — and at its bold graffiti-painted walls. Except for special events or tours organized by City Hall, the metal door leading to a staircase down into the “gardens” is padlocked. But the 300 members of the garden association have keys.
So Mr. Jousse and I stopped by the Rez-de-Chaussée bistro at 65, rue Letort a few blocks away, and the owner, Thierry Cayla, gave us a key. Over lunch at the bistro, we joked that perhaps Mr. Cayla should turn the gardens into a tourist attraction by preparing picnic baskets for visitors.
But then, at 16.90 euros for a three-course meal, you would miss the chance for one of the best bistro bargains in Paris.
WHERE TO FIND THE FLOWERS
The locations and summer hours for some of Paris’s hidden gardens:
Vallée Suisse is in the Garden of the Champs-Élysées, at the junction of the Cours de la Reine, Cours Albert 1er and Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eighth Arrondissement. Open daily 24 hours.
Jardin Tino Rossi, Quai St.-Bernard, Fifth Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to dusk, and Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to dusk.
Jardin Catherine-Labouré, 29, rue de Babylone, Seventh Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The Japanese garden at Unesco headquarters, 7, place Fontenoy, Seventh Arrondissement, is open by reservation only; call 33-1-45-68-03-59.
Clos Montmartre, 14-18 rue des Saules, 18th Arrondissement; open only during the grape harvest in September.
Garden of the Hôtel-Dieu, 1, place du Parvis Notre Dame, Fourth Arrondissement; 33-1-42-34-82-34; open daily 24 hours.
Square René Viviani, 2, rue du Fouarre, Fifth Arrondissement; Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Petit-Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Eighth Arrondissement; 33-1-53-43-40-00; the garden is open every day except Monday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Musée de la Vie Romantique, Hôtel Scheffer-Renan, 16, rue Chaptal, Ninth Arrondissement; 33-1-55-31-95-67; the garden is open every day except Monday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Musée Zadkine, 100 bis, rue d’Assas, Sixth Arrondissement; 33-1-55-42-77-20. The garden is open daily except Monday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
L’Union Bouliste du 15ème, 43, rue Blomet, 15th Arrondissement; 33-1-45-66-87-21; through Aug. 31, open Monday to Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Jardin des Plantes has several entrances: Rue Auguste Conte, Rue Cuvier, Rue Buffon, Rue Geoffroy-St.-Hilaire or the Place Valhubert. Open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 7:45 p.m.; 33-1-40-79-56-01; www.mnhn.fr.
Square Carpeaux, 23, rue Carpeaux, 18th Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Parc de la Turlure, Rue de La Bonne or Rue du Chevalier de la Barre, 18th Arrondissement; open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Jardin Sauvage St.-Vincent, Rue St. Vincent, 18th Arrondissement; 33-1-43-28-47-63; open only on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Les jardins du Ruisseau, next to 110, rue du Ruisseau, 18th Arrondissement; www.lesjardinsduruisseau.org, are not generally open to the public; if one of the members of the association is in, it may be open. You can make an appointment by sending an e-mail message to contact@lesjardinsduruisseau.org.
THE COUNTRY LIFE IN THE CITY
From hidden courtyards to tucked-away garden cafes, Paris offers hundreds of dining spots where the verdant surroundings might make you forget you’re in a city.
WHERE TO EAT
La Maison de l’Amérique Latine (217, boulevard St.-Germain, Seventh Arrondissement; 33-1-49-54-75-10; www.mal217.org) serves classic French cuisine in an elegant “jardin à la Française,” tucked behind two 18th-century mansions. Thirty tables under white parasols overlook two acres of manicured lawn. Expect to spend about 55 euros for dinner without wine, about $87 at $1.58 to the euro.
Les Jardins de Bagatelle (Route de Sèvres, 16th Arrondissement; 33-1-40-67-16-49) offers country dining at the edge of the city. Dinner, which might include melon soup, scallops with leek, and lemon tort, averages around 60 euros, with wine.
Le Chalet des Îles (Lac inférieur du Bois de Boulogne, 16th Arrondissement ; 33-1-42-88-04-69; www.lechaletdesiles.net): picture dinner in an island garden, in the middle of a huge park — only a few miles from the center of Paris. This rustic pink-and-green Second Empire chalet with outdoor terraces is surrounded by a lake and reachable by a minute-long boat ride. For about 50 euros, you can dine on lemon-marinated veal carpaccio with vegetables and mozzarella.
Le Saut du Loup (107, rue de Rivoli, First Arrondissement; 33-1-42-25-49-55; www.lesautduloup.com), inside the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, has an outdoor terrace overlooking the Louvre. Lunch might include gazpacho, steak with polenta and ice cream for around 40 euros.
La Muscade (36, rue de Montpensier, First Arrondissement; 33-1-42-97-51-36; www.muscade-palais-royal.com) has 30 or so tables scattered near the garden of the Palais Royal, with a lovely views of the garden’s row of lime trees. A sandwich costs about 10 euros.
Café Lenôtre (10, avenue des Champs-Élysées; Eighth Arrondissement ; 33-1-42-65-85-10; www.lenotre.fr) offers chic snacking in an elegant green setting. A club sandwich with a salad goes for 14.50 euros.
WHERE TO STAY
At the deluxe Hospes Lancaster (7, rue de Berri, Eighth Arrondissement ; 33-1-40-76-40-76; www.hotel-lancaster.fr), not far from the Arc de Triomphe, ask for a room overlooking the courtyard garden. The garden is small, but with its cork oaks and jasmine-embalmed Japanese purity, this is an exquisite refuge. A standard room costs 490 euros.
Hôtel des Grandes Écoles (75, rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Fifth Arrondissement; 33-1-43 26-79-23; www.hotel-grandes-ecoles.com) is in the Latin Quarter. It comprises three houses surrounding a beautiful flower garden. Doubles are 113 to 138 euros.
— Maia De La Baume
ELAINE SCIOLINO is a correspondent for the Paris bureau of The Times.
More Articles in Travel »
Friday, June 27, 2008
Mannheim, June 22 - 24, 2008
Drove with John Fiore in Steven's car down to Mannheim on Sunday, June 22. He had his GP on Mon. morning, and concerts Monday and Tuesday nite for
Musikalische Akademie Mannheim's 8th Concert.
I stayed with Adelgunde Herzog, and visited about 3 hours with JK on Tues. afternoon.
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