Seeing Paris in a New Way from Saint-Germain-en-Laye

The top of the Eiffel tower and Mont-Valerien seen from Saint-Germain-en-Laye 

Today I saw Paris in a new way, a new view of my favorite city. I saw it through the eyes of one of my favorite authors.  In his new book “Paris in the Present Tense” Mark Helprin writes the story of Jules Lacour, a 75-year-old cellist who lives in the village (commune) of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, more than ten miles west of Paris, on the third reverse bend of the Seine River as it snakes west from the center of Paris toward the English Channel.  Until today, I had never visited that village. Near the end of the book, Jules Lacour looks at Paris from the place I saw it today. It is as lovely in person as Helprin’s description.

Hotel de Ville (City Hall) Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Like most residents of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, I traveled to the village on the regional commuter train RER A from Paris.  When I stepped from the train, the escalator took me to the west side of the huge park Les Parterres—manicured grounds and trees stretching from the Grand City Hall east and north for a half mile to a bluff the looks back toward Paris.  From that bluff at the Terrasse du Chateau, a magnificent promenade more than 100 feet wide stretches north from the village for more than a mile. 

The Bridge at Le Vesinet-Le Pecq

When I walked to the edge of the bluff, I was high above the Seine, looking down on the bridge at Le Vesinet—Le Pecq. To the south is Versailles. Nearly due east is the peak of the Eiffel Tower. The city of Paris itself is obscured by the Mont-Valerien just west of the Tower and the city.  In the book, Jules Lacour was looking in this same direction toward Paris.

Restaurant Maison Fournaise

As I looked, I saw my own history of visiting Paris over the past twenty years unfold in front of me. Three miles east from the bluff where I stood was the next full bend of the river at Chatou.  On the east edge of Chatou is a tiny island in the Seine: Ile des Impressionistes. On the island is a small impressionist museum and the Restaurant Maison Fournaise. When I worked for Millennium Chemicals in the late 1990s, I was in Paris several times a year.  The Paris office was in Rueil-Malmaison just across the river toward Paris from Chatou.  The sales manager in that office was a serious gourmand who took me to the best restaurants in Paris so I would know where to entertain visiting journalists.

For me, the best of all the restaurants he showed me for an event or dinner was Maison Fournaise. Not only was the food good, this restaurant serves lunch and dinner on the porch that is at the center of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting “Luncheon of the Boating Party.”  Both for Millennium and for my next employer, I rented this porch for an evening meal watching boats pass on the Seine as we ate dinner. My guests from other countries were delighted with this lovely place they had never heard of.  Even some Parisians did not know of the little restaurant under the bridge at Chatou.  In addition to being the scene of the Renoir painting, the restaurant has several sketches on the wall covered with Lucite. These sketches were the work of Renoir’s young friend Henri Matisse. The young Matisse was in love with a bar maid who worked at the restaurant. He was often short of money and occasionally paid his bar tab with drawings on the walls.

The same train RER A passes through Chatou and Rueil-Malmaison back to Paris.  So several times I stayed in hotels in that area, a delightful surprise for the people who tracked my expense reports, because I stayed for less than $100 per night, when the sales team was in Paris at double or triple that price. 

Another 3 miles east toward Paris is the village of Suresne on the east side of Mont-Valerien, the hill between Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Paris.  I stayed several times in Suresne, also for less than $100 a night. I stayed there because I always had my racing bicycle with me on trips to Paris. Just across the bridge from Suresne to Paris is L’Hippodrome on the west side of Bois de Boulogne, the huge park in the southwest corner of the city. 

Riding around L'Hippodrome, Bois de Boulogne

Every day the 2-mile road that circles L’Hippodrome is closed to traffic for training races from 10 a.m. to dark.  As often as I could, either in the morning or the evening, I rode in those training races.  From Suresne I just rolled down Mont-Valerien and started warming up to ride in packs of cyclists that sometimes reached 30mph on the flat road around the horseracing track. 

From L’Hippodrome, I rode through the park which is enclosed by another loop in the Seine, then along the south (Left) bank of the river toward the place I love best in the center of Paris: the area that stretches along Quai d'Orsay and then south and up on Boulevard Saint-Michel. This is an area of bistros and bookstores: crowded bistros and crowded bookstores. Shakespeare & Company, Gibert Joseph, and dozens of little specialty bookshops line the roads in this area near the Sorbonne and Jardin du Luxembourg. 

Boulevard Saint-Michel

Of course, every love story has a shadow of loss. In my case, on the east end of the lovely Ile de Cite is the Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation—the memorial of the deportation of 200,000 Jews from France. This underground monument is beautifully made and wrenchingly sad.  It testifies that every one of the 200,000 Jews who went to the death camps had a life and hopes that were wrenched away by Nazis. 

The Deportation Memorial

In “Paris in the Present Tense” Jules Lacour and his parents hide from the Nazis from shortly after Jules is born in 1940 until his fourth birthday when the family is discovered.  His parents are killed; Jules survives. At the book’s end Jules struggles against the revival of anti-Semitism in France 70 years later. 

A Ride West from the Memorial to Saint-Germain-en-Laye

As I returned to the city, I imagined myself riding from the Deportation Memorial to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  I would begin on the Ile de Cite at the memorial site, riding through the park and across the island.  I would look west in the direction of my birthplace and home far across the Atlantic Ocean. I first pass through the Paris of love of learning at Boulevard Saint-Michel on Quai d’Orsay, past Pont Neuf and a dozen other unique and lovely bridges toward and past the Eiffel Tower. After that I would ride through Bois de Boulogne, to L’Hippodrome and for a lap or two join the racers perfecting their craft.

As I leave the training race, I immediately cross the Seine and ride up to Suresne and over Mont-Valerien and down into Rueil-Malmaison. There I ride past the gleaming glass and steel suburban building that used to be my Paris office.  I cross the looping Seine again with a detour from the middle of the bridge, down the ramp to Ile des Impressionistes and Maison Fournaise.  Back up on the bridge I pass over the Seine. If I glance south on the west end of the bridge, I can see the next island south of Chatou, Ile de la Chaussee, where the story “Femme Fatale” by Guy de Maupassant is set.  In moments I pass through Chatou and into Le Vesinet.  In front of me I can see the hill of Saint-Germain-en-Laye rising to the west. 

Now I cross the Seine to the west for the last time on the bridge, Le Vesinet-Le Pecq.  Mark Helprin made this crossing forever comic for me in the book. This bridge is the place his crude and insanely rich housemates speed across the Seine toward Paris on matching black Ducati Pingale motorcycles.  I ride though Le Pecq and up the hill toward the village center of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and its massive city hall. 

For the view back to Paris, I ride slowly on the lanes across the park to the edge of the bluff above the river.  The bridge at Le Vesinet-Le Pecq is below and slightly south.  I can glimpse Chatou, Ile des Impressionistes, and Rueil-Malmaison through the trees in front of me. Mont-Valerien hides Paris, all but the top of the Eiffel Tower and all of Suresne and Bois de Boulogne, but I know they are in the present moment, the present tense, in front of me.