Back in Paris: A Room That Feels Like Home

 Back in Paris: A Room That Feels Like Home

After leaving the Château and making my way back to Paris, I arrived in a part of the city that immediately felt familiar.

I had recently been spending time in Le Marais, exploring another part of Paris that I have grown to enjoy, but this time I was returning to the area around Étienne Marcel, where I stayed during many of my first eight or nine visits to Paris. There is something comforting about coming back to streets you recognize. I know the general layout, I know where I can walk, and I know that almost everything I need is within easy reach.

It felt a little like coming home.

And then I opened the door to my hotel room.

I knew immediately that I was going to be very happy here for the next few nights.

The room isn’t simply a place to sleep. It has personality. Warm gray walls, touches of mustard yellow and gold, beautiful fabrics, soft lighting and wonderfully whimsical artwork give it the feeling of a carefully decorated Parisian bedroom rather than a generic hotel room.

The bed dominates the room, and it looks wonderfully inviting. Crisp white linens are piled with pillows against a rich golden upholstered headboard. Small mustard-colored accent pillows repeat the colors in the artwork and furnishings, while a soft gray coverlet stretches across the foot of the bed.

After all the traveling and walking I have been doing, that bed looks particularly good!

Above it hangs the room’s most distinctive piece of art, a large painting of a group of wonderfully eccentric gentlemen dressed in what appears to be 18th-century clothing. Their powdered wigs are tied with enormous black ribbons, and their long coats, stockings and walking sticks make them look as though they have wandered into my room from another century.

Then I began noticing that they were everywhere.

Smaller paintings scattered around the room show individual pieces of the same visual story. One gives me the back of a gentleman in his white wig and black ribbon. Another focuses almost humorously on a pair of stockinged legs and a walking stick. Another includes a little dog.

Against a textured gold wall, these smaller paintings almost become little windows into the larger scene above the bed. It is playful, slightly eccentric and very French. I love it.

There are quieter historical touches as well. A framed old view of Paris hangs on another wall, and tucked into a niche is an ornate, old-fashioned weather instrument. An oval mirror, patterned draperies and an elegant floor lamp continue that feeling of a room assembled from interesting pieces rather than furnished from a standard hotel catalog.

At the far end of the room, beside the window, is a proper desk and chair. That immediately caught my attention because it gives me a comfortable place to sit with my photographs and write about these last days in France.

And, perhaps even more importantly, there is coffee.

I discovered a complete little beverage station with a Krups capsule espresso machine, electric kettle, cups, coffee capsules, tea, sugar and all the necessary accompaniments. Two reusable glass water bottles were waiting beside it.

That means tomorrow morning I can make coffee before I have to get completely dressed and venture out into Paris.

That may be one of my favorite hotel luxuries.

But the bedroom was only half of the discovery.

The bathroom is remarkably complete.

It is finished in warm, pale stone with bands of narrow textured tiles that give the room subtle visual interest. There is an illuminated mirror over the sink, a wall-mounted toilet, good counter space, plenty of towels and even a small seat tucked beneath the vanity.

The amenities made me smile because someone had clearly thought about what a traveler might actually need. There was a shower cap, dental kit, shaving kit, cotton products and other toiletries neatly arranged beside the sink. Glasses were individually protected, and wall-mounted dispensers provided additional products.

I even found Damana orange-blossom hand and body lotion, along with matching toiletries. These are tiny things, perhaps, but after traveling for days, the tiny things begin to feel rather luxurious.

Then I spotted the heated towel rail.

Several thick white towels were already hanging from it.

Wonderful.

But I have saved the bathroom feature I am most excited about for last.

The shower.

I loved my private bathroom at the Château. Having my own bathroom in such an old and historic property was a luxury in itself, and I was very grateful for it.

The water pressure, however, was mild at best.

So when I opened the glass shower enclosure here and saw the substantial handheld shower head, modern mixer controls and serious-looking plumbing, I studied the whole arrangement with considerably more enthusiasm than most people probably devote to a hotel shower.

My immediate thought was:

This shower has water-pressure potential.

There is a proper glass enclosure, a shelf for toiletries, a grab bar and enough room to move comfortably. Everything about it suggests that when I turn that water on, something substantial may actually happen.

After a week of gentle Château showers, I am ridiculously excited about this.

A hot shower with good water pressure followed by a warm towel from a heated towel rack sounds positively decadent.

And perhaps that is why this room feels so good right now.

I have spent days exploring. I have walked through villages and markets, wandered around the Château, climbed stairs, investigated old buildings, photographed everything that caught my eye, eaten wonderful meals, talked late into the evening, ridden in vans and trains, and accumulated hundreds of photographs and even more memories.

Now I have arrived somewhere I can simply settle in.

For the next few days, my suitcase doesn’t have to move.

My coffee machine is waiting on the desk.

My photographs can become stories.

The streets around Étienne Marcel, streets that have been part of so many of my earlier Paris visits, are waiting outside.

And here, I have this wonderfully comfortable little Paris room waiting for me when I return.

There is something especially satisfying about ending a long journey through France by coming back to a neighborhood that already carries memories for me, while still discovering something completely new.

And apparently, I also have a shower with serious potential.

I think I am going to enjoy these next few days very much.