Hotel Vendome

Heloise stayed for two more days and then quietly decided to pull the plug on her stay in St. Tropez. It was just too awkward, and she was spending no time with her mother. And it was unnerving to be there, with everyone doing drugs. She felt sorry for her half-brother and -sister growing up in an atmosphere like that. Heloise didn’t call to tell her father she was leaving, because she didn’t want to worry him and didn’t want him to make her come home. She wanted to go to Paris first. She told her mother that she had to get back earlier than planned, and Miriam didn’t object or even ask her why. She could see how unhappy Heloise was, and as far as Miriam was concerned, she wasn’t much fun to have around.

Heloise left the next morning, when everyone was still in bed, and left them a note thanking them. She took a taxi to Nice, which cost her two hundred dollars, and flew to Paris. She was in the city by four o’clock and looked up a youth hostel in an old convent in the Marais, in the fourth arrondissement. She took a taxi to get there. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and seemed appropriate, with wholesome-looking young people hanging around outside with backpacks on. Some of them were American and said hello to her when she walked in. There were several British kids and Australians, a few Italians, and two boys from Japan. Heloise was able to get a bed in a double room for very little money.

It was the size of a closet, but she was immensely relieved to be there. She would have done just about anything at that point to get away from St. Tropez. Once again her mother had disappointed her, but Heloise was used to it by now, and she was thrilled to be in Paris and discover the city on her own. She had been there as a child with her father, but this time she wanted to explore it herself, go to museums, sit in the cafes, eat in little bistros, and she wanted to visit the hotels that had inspired her father when he put together his hotel.

The first stop on her list was the Hotel Ritz in the Place Vendome. She had been warned not to wear blue jeans or they wouldn’t let her in since she wasn’t staying there, so she wore a pair of simple black slacks and a white blouse and put her long red hair in a bun, just as she did at the hotel, which made her look older than she was. And she was in awe of the elegant surroundings the moment she walked through the door: the long mirrored halls, the wood paneling. The chasseurs were her own age and wore almost the identical uniform to the bellmen at their hotel. She walked all through the lobby and looked into the elegant bar. Every inch of the hotel was beautiful, from the flowers to the chandeliers, and she could see why it had inspired her father to set up his own hotel in a similar style.

Using a map of the city, she went to the Crillon after that, which was another of the old elegant hotels, this one on the Place de la Concorde. She read in a guidebook she had bought that the guillotine had been located outside the hotel years before. The Crillon was beautiful as well. And from there she went to the Meurice on the rue Royale. It had been German headquarters during the Second World War and was another of the city’s grand hotels.

She saved the Plaza Athenee and the George V, which was now a Four Seasons, until the next day and was equally impressed by them, for their elegance and beauty. But the hotel that had snagged her heart was the Ritz, and she went back to it again and again. She had tea in the garden, and brunch on Sunday morning in the Salon Cesar, to see if she could borrow any ideas for the Vendome.

And she took photographs of the flowers at the George V with her cell phone, so she could show them to Jan at home. The American designer Jeff Leatham had created a whole new style of flower arranging that was different from anything she had ever seen, with long stems sticking at odd angles out of tall transparent vases, creating a whole installation like a work of art. She wanted to try and imitate that for their lobby. For the first time she felt as though she were in partnership with her father, and was prouder than ever of the gem he had created with the Vendome. Paris was like the mecca of the hotel industry, and she visited several smaller, elegant hotels as well, like the St. James in the sixteenth arrondissement, which combined the elegance of France with the atmosphere of a British men’s club, with ancestral portraits, wood paneling, and deep leather couches in the bar.

She spent a week in Paris discovering every hotel she had ever heard of and even a few tiny ones on the Left Bank. And at night she would go back to the youth hostel and plan what sights she was going to see the next day. She had to switch youth hostels after a few days because she had stayed the limit of days they would allow. And she moved to one nearby, also in the Marais.