Elegant

A weekend in Paris. A sentence to make you swoon. Paris makes Britain look like a spotty, gormless teenager, all gangly legs and glum moods. Paris in one word would be elegant. This is true from the moment you arrive a Charles de Gaulle airport, my favourite airport in the whole world; old but not dated, calm, elegant and easy to navigate.

To begin with it felt as though I’d never escape from England and English speakers in order to immerse myself into the stylish delights of France – I seemed to be haunted by Australia, even though I was travelling from the English Midlands, where Antipodeans are not exactly thick on the ground. It started on the plane, where just in front of my back-row seat was a loud Australian with a very thick accent who inadvertently made herself known to all around her.

What came next was slightly more surreal. Once we were airborn, one of our cheerful flight attendants Flo and Amy did a slightly unusual version of the necessary announcements about drinks, snacks and toilets fitted with smoke detectors. She feigned a strong Australian drawl, only the occasional slip into a south-eastern English accent giving her away. It wasn’t a short announcement, either, after the toilets came an explanation about the currencies that the snack bar accepted, and the exchange rate offered. All in a thick, ocker twang. Weird. It didn’t feel really like a compliment to a pleasantly musical lilt like it might have if they’d gone Irish, and English folk aren’t known for their love of Australian accents. So it felt vaguely insulting, but not enough to bother complaining about. Mainly it was just odd.

But by the time we’d landed and I was safely on the train into the city centre I was sure I was finally immersed in Paris. Then I noticed the magazine that someone had left on the seat beside me. It was a copy of the December edition of Australian Woman’s Weekly. Oh dear. I took it home anyway and caught up on the love lives of new B-list television personalities I’d never heard of. Fortunately, apart from the dear Australian friend I was in Paris to visit, the remainder of my weekend was reassuringly Parisian. And very elegant.

Mostly, we ate. An old Parisian brasserie for dinner, at which I devoured the bread on the side with a hunger born of a year somewhere where the bread is awful. For breakfast, pastries as well as baguettes spread with glorious butter. For lunches, buttery, creamy, bacony quiche – and a bit of baguette on the side. I was starting to feel like I might turn into a delicious, chewy, crusty, not-too-light bread stick. All of what we ate was simple and delicious; and if elegant can be described as unfussy grace, the food certainly qualified.

Also elegant were the shops. The contrast with Britain was strong, as the UK is plagued by retail franchises, to the point where independent shops are a tiny minority and every shopping strip looks drearily similar. The fine quartiere of Paris in which we browsed couldn’t have been more different. We never quite made it to the planned exhibition, and spent the afternoon strolling, chatting, and oohing over the delightful shops.

Everywhere you looked was a chocolatier, a butcher, a shop selling only Spanish olive oil.  There was the world’s first department store in its restored art-nouveau elegance, all airy and white with ornate skylights and a lovely atrium. We perused the scented candles that cost half a day’s wages and were each stored under an elegant glass dome to keep their fragrances fresh. Next door was an astonishing food hall; elsewhere quaint accessories to put with your perfectly-behaved Parisian children. Further on, a greengrocer whose window was festooned with garlands made from tomatoes and green vegetables. Only in Paris are even the vegetables elegant.

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