A Rose In Bloom

- Le Marais

It was my second time in Paris, the first being almost 20 years ago. In two decades, for me, the city had taken on a mythical quality — a result of my own adolescent memories and the images that I had absorbed via films and the internet. And so, at the tail end of a trip to France, I stepped onto the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle Airport gingerly, hoping that the city would live up to all the hype.

At the back of my mind, Audrey Hepburn’s Sabrina was reminding me that ‘Paris isn’t for changing planes...it’s for changing your outlook...for throwing open the windows and letting in la vie en rose’. But with its now copiously Instagrammed sights, I wanted to shirk all the cliches and tourist haunts and find out if what Ms Hepburn described still existed.

I checked into the Pullman hotel in La Defense, chiding myself at first for staying in Paris’ business district. But all was forgotten on the first night, as I bit into a truffle mushroom naan followed by one stuffed with scallops, freshly baked in the restaurant’s tandoor oven, and washed down with champagne.