Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning in the 7th arrondissement in a lucky find of an apartment, and rumors of a vintage car show somewhere on the vast grounds around Les Invalides.
Drag Loree out of bed, let’s go. How often does this happen? The answer is always yes.
The streets are empty—a little overcast, tall green trees, shops and cafes overlorded by six floors of sleeping apartments.
An occasional car, a scooter, or a bicycle zips past, but quietly. The streets are ours.
The night before was explosive. The Paris Saint-Germain football club had beaten Milan in the European Cup in a dramatic 5-0 blowout. The bars were all packed and roaring. I had chatted with a couple on a Yamaha Tenere motorcycle, and when the victory happened, his girlfriend translated that “It was the greatest night of his life.”
Paris loves their football team. The streets were in chaos and apparently a bit of a riot.
So maybe it was a bit of a hangover, but this Sunday morning was empty.
As was the grounds of Les Invalids.
No cars. No car show. Nobody.
Breakfast then.
We walk. Past closed café after closed café.
The man in the white lab coat, I love those white lab coats, hosing down the sidewalk and watering the plants of a café.
We’d seen a little pedestrian side street with a lot of sidewalk cafes earlier and found it, one café seems open, so we walk past shuttered shops, and yes, one couple on one table having coffee, the server greets us in English. They always know.
We take a bench seat, two little tables in front of us, and order omelets, coffees, baguettes, croissants, and watch Paris wake.
The round little old lady hobbles up, dragging her shopping trolley, and greets the server; they chat in French. She sits and opens her newspaper, lights a cigarette, and her little espresso arrives. She probably starts every morning in that same chair at that same table at that same time and reads the paper, smokes her cigarettes, and sips her coffee and starts her day in a peace we’ll never know.
The street is barely wide enough for one car, and those are only bringing in deliveries, or perhaps a cab, or the two big police officers on all too small scooters, stopping to chat with a shop owner.
The omelets are a bit browned. Our memories of a perfect omelet years earlier at Le Deus Magot still haunt us. Just eggs, a little cheese, but sublime. How did they do this? How were those eggs perfect? Fifteen years of that memory and endless pursuit, and never matched. We’d even walked ages the day before to reach the legendary café to miss breakfast, but wrangled “scrambled” eggs, and they were watery and bland.
These omelets were overcooked, but no matter. The coffee is hot, and the baguette is crisp, with butter and strawberry jam, a savory and sweet.
But the croissant.
My God… The Croissant.
The world is full of objects that look like The Croissant but are just not The Croissant.
This was The Croissant.
Is it immoral to tear up at the buttery, crispy, chewy, messy perfection of The Croissant that I had that morning? If it is, I’m a sinner. I tear up thinking of its presence and god-like perfection.
No hurry. Paris wants nothing from us. Just be here. Observe. Immerse. Join.
The American Power Couple saunters in, supermodel perfect and dressed, stops to look at the menu, I spy a few syllables that give them away, posing as a French Power Couple, they keep going.
The hardworking woman, long denim skirt, setting up a table and leaflets, perhaps protesting something, she moves quickly, skitters to the little grocer just putting out the morning fruit to get a drink, finishes setting up her table covered in papers, and no, not protesting to save shrimp, selling newspapers. I watch Parisians pick one up and chat.
Across from us is an ALDI, a grocery store, and people come in with their wheeled shopping trollies to do Sunday morning shopping.
People walk by holding baguettes. How cliché. How beautiful. How delightful. Every third person is carrying a baguette; half covered in a paper bag. The Sunday alarm went off that says, “Get your baguette, they’re warm and bring joy.”
The Lebanese café directly in front of us is coming to life. A long, refrigerated case, the full length of the café, is waking up. Three Lebanese-looking guys pull it out, start loading up colorful trays of food, one side with a dozen stainless trays of ice cream, the other with trays of god-knows-what. A case of baklava, probably cooked that morning, set atop, bottles lined up perfectly, every surface polished by a man with a spray bottle and a towel. The well-rehearsed ballet of morning prep that’s been repeated every morning.
Paris yawns and stretches.
More shoppers, more baguettes. Tourists dragging unhappy suitcases, their little plastic wheels grousing at the cobblestones.
Doors open from the apartments above, and the neighbors come out to shop, visit a friend, or stroll in a park.
A man walks by, happy and smiling, with a massive dog.
How does he do it?
A tiny dog, maybe, better yet, a cat, but a hundred pounds of hairy dog? Not in Paris.
The coffees both came with a little wrapped something. It’s a tiny, almond cake the size of an almond.
Lagnappe.
The omelets went, only crumbs from The Croissant, and we sit. Not bothered by a server wanting to upsell dessert. The round old lady across the aisle had finished her coffee and was onto another cigarette and her crosswords.
Let the morning awaken. It’s Sunday. Paris wakes slowly because time means something different here.
Thank you, Baby Jesus, for that.
Different time means something.
Have some with your Croissant.
Immerse.
