Happy Birthday to Me
- Airport Court
- Apr 7, 2016
- 3 min read
Paris, France
Josh had been keeping our Paris hotel a secret even after the secret of the trip was revealed. Now I know why!
I will explain in a future post HOW he made this happen – but, for now, I’ll just explain the WHAT. We took the RER Train into the main part of the city where Josh then instructed me to follow him. We were walking down the Rue de la Paix – a well-known expensive hotel and shopping street near many of the museums and the Eiffel Tower. We were surrounded by very fancy people carrying Louis Vuitton and Dior shopping bags when we stepped into the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome Hotel.
This is one of the nicest hotels in the whole city – known for having one of the best concierge services in Paris (you want a jet to take you for an afternoon in Venice at the last minute? Done!). I still didn’t believe this was our hotel as a night here is easily more than our monthly mortgage. But, I was wrong (again, I’ll explain how we were able to do this in a later post, when I have more time).
In a flash we transformed from Josh and Courtney – a social worker and a struggling business owner who like $6.00 street panini – to Monsieur Tussey and Madame Roller – a government official and a fancy lawyer who took a quick trip to Paris for the latter’s birthday.
I can normally feel comfortable in most situations but this place is like an entirely different world. This is clearly how the 1% stay in hotels.
They knew it was Madame Roller’s birthday, so they took us to the hotel restaurant for a free (thank goodness) glass of champaign and some macaroons while they prepared our room and took our luggage up. They showed us the menu and I thought I was going to faint. The cheapest item, by far, was a cup of American Coffee for 10 euros. And there were people all around us drinking and eating this liquid gold.
The room is fabulous, obviously. And we’re so close to the sites, we can just walk. We are WAY too poor to eat anywhere near our hotel, so we do have to walk 4 or 5 blocks away to get our $6.00 street panini. But, you won’t hear me complaining!
After the shock of our hotel wore off and I had sufficient time to dig through all the fancy freebies in the room (gold pony tail holder, bubble bath, nail clippers) and prance around using a rich French lady accent, we went out into the beautiful city streets.
The Musee d’Orsay has been on the list of museums I’ve been dying to see for a while. We didn’t have time to go the last time we were in Paris so we rushed there immediately. The museum is in an old train station and one of the most architecturally astounding museums I’ve ever seen.
It also houses an excellent collection from my favorite artist Gustave Courbet, a realist French painter from the mid-1800s. He did not like being told what to do and bucked tradition and expectation every chance he got. A general BAMF, he got in some trouble later in life for painting “crude” paintings of women’s bodies how they actually looked rather than a romanticized version of perfection.
The Origin of the World (essentially, a close up in a woman’s lady bits) is one of these painting and it was so controversial that it wasn’t even put on display until 1988. We got to see it today! We also got to see a great Van Gogh exhibit and tons more beautiful works.
When we got back to the room, turn down service had apparently occurred while we were out. They left slippers and robes, which were the most luxurious things I’ve ever worn!
Friday, Josh has planned several surprise activities, of which I know nothing about. So, that should be a fun time!
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