Travel Stories

September 26, 2005

1. The Sewers of Paris. Wendy and I were visiting in Paris with David and Andrew, and we were staying at the D' Angleterre Hotel. We had planned on a prior trip to visit the sewers of Paris, which apparently has an introductory video about their history, followed by an underground tour. We pretty much knew where it was, and thought we correctly remembered the Metro stop and route to get there.

In order to be sure, we asked the concierge at D' Angleterre, and he said, no, that was not the right stop, and proceeded to inform us of exactly where to go on the Metro, which stop to exit, and that directly across the street from the Metro exit we would see a line of people waiting to get in, and that's where we should enter. We followed his directions.

We bought the tickets, and entered with about eight other tourists, mostly German, and proceeded to go down a series of stairs and walkways to where the video would be located. After walking for what seemed like quite a while, Andrew started riding me as to "where’s the video already, Marty?" "where are the sewers." I responded that if he was not careful, he would see ghosts and skeletons!

We then turned a comer and came face to face with a huge and continuing array of skeletons and skulls! Instantly, we smart tourists realized that we had not reached the sewers of Paris, but had stumbled into the catacombs of Paris!

The other tourists could not understand our gales of uncontrollable laughter verging on tears, our continuing jokes and black humor, and our giddy behavior. But then, no one could possibly replicate the experience except by a similar accident caused by extreme weakness in the French language, and the good fortune of the concierge not quite understanding the English word "sewers."

To cap it off, as we climbed out of the catacombs, a guard asked to inspect Wendy's large handbag. I asked him why they inspected bags on the way out, rather than in. I then said, "Oh, you mean people…?!" The guard immediately nodded and said in English "yes, they try all the time; I get one a day!" We exited the catacombs to the street, laughing with even more giddy glee at the accidental experience.

We learned that the catacombs of Paris had been created following the French Revolution to clean out the shallow burial fields that existed around Paris, and were sources of disease. Literally hundreds of thousands of bodies and skeletons were removed, cleaned and stacked or piled neatly in the catacombs.

2. Chocolate in Paris. On an earlier trip to Paris, Wendy and I stayed with David and Andrew at the Hotel Jea de Paume on the Ile St. Louis. The day after we arrived, Wendy and I were taking a late afternoon nap, and Andrew went out exploring. He returned and quietly entered our room after knocking, and gently shook my shoulder and said I had to come with him right away because he had discovered "a store that only sold chocolate!" I, of course, thought that was an important discovery and promptly went with him to find Faucher, which indeed in those days not only sold chocolate but hot chocolate as well. As it was February (we were on our way to Israel where we would meet Jon, Jill, Shira and Ben, and were accompanied in Paris by Mert and Alma), we stopped more than once for the best hot chocolate we have ever had.

3. Scotch at Inverlochy Castle. Wendy and I traveled to Scotland with Peter and Barbara, and spent a couple of nights at Inverlochy Castle, one of the grandest and best inns in Great Britain. Peter had two rules for the trip; one that we should have Scottish smoked salmon at least once each day; and that we should try two different single malt scotches each night.

While chatting with the innkeeper over scotch after dinner at Inverlochy, Peter opined that we thought Macallan was the best of all the single malts. The innkeeper suggested that we should tell Mr. Macallan that, since he was sitting nearby. To this day, the four of us regret not having done that, and don't know whether it was due to unlikely and unexpected shyness or more likely, having already had too much wine followed by too much scotch!

4. Peugeot in Scotland. On that same trip, we experienced the great art collections of Glasgow and Edinburgh, including the relatively recently formed Burrell collection in Glasgow, and the extraordinary historical collection at the National Gallery in Edinburgh.

We were reminded that my Hebrew school friend and former director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Alan Shestack, in response to a question from me at a dinner party at our home some years earlier, responded that "pound for pound, the best art museum in the world is the National Gallery of Edinburgh." I am not sure he would remember the comment, but I had asked him which museum had the greatest percentage of top quality art, and we were not disappointed on our visit.

Another surprise of Edinburgh was the Botanical Garden, parts of which had a protected mini-climate of almost tropical plants, based on the topography and sunshine available.

We learned to appreciate much about Scotland, the scenery, the people, the museums, the architecture, and the design of William Rennie MacIntosh on interior and furniture design.

But we learned not to like, or trust, the French car, Peugeot. We had rented one in Glasgow, and I noticed that, if I turned a corner very sharply, we heard and felt a "thump." Thinking nothing of it, since the car was brand new with only 500 miles on it, we carried on.

Driving in Scotland along one of the fjords, at a relatively high speed, I almost lost control, and from then on we drove quite slowly.

After traveling to Inverness, and playing golf at Gleneagles, we returned to the city, on our way to drive back to Inverlochy in the town of Prince William. I stopped at a busy intersection behind a car, which for some reason wasn't moving, so I made a sharp turn with the steering wheel to the left to go around him. At that point in time, the left front wheel came off the car, which then settled onto the pavement. Of course, the police and others gathered around, and we called the car rental company to come pick us up and get us a new car so we could return to Prince William.

An older, serious and dignified man came from the rental company, and examined the car. He was a former police inspector, and exclaimed to us that he could not believe it, but the J-joint on the car had been installed backwards in the factory! He then provided us with a Volvo station wagon for the rest of our trip, and we were not billed for the car.

To this day, I occasionally think of what would have happened had the J-joint given way along that fjord when I almost lost control. To this day, and in the future, I have not, and will not, drive in a Peugeot again.

Since I assume factory workers in the Peugeot plant in France know how to install J-joints, I assume this was drunkenness of some kind on the job or, more likely, industrial sabotage.

5. Malliouhana on Anguilla. For several years, Wendy and I took a one-week winter vacation at the fabulous beachfront hotel Malliouhana on Anguilla. It was known for its high-quality French food, since the chef in charge of the kitchen was Jo Rostang, the owner of La Bonne Auberge in Antibes, a then 2-star restaurant. During the winter months, he spent much of the time at Malliouhana, and brought over several of his young waiters, who acted as the captains at the restaurant in the hotel. On our first night, Wendy asked her typical question "whether M. Rostang, the chef, was in the kitchen that night?" The young captain, Laurent Leke, observed that the food would be fine whether or not he was cooking but, yes, he was present. Wendy then noticed that a white-haired man whom she recognized as the great 3-star chef Roger Verge was sitting just a few tables from us. Wendy asked if M. Rostang was sitting at that table with M. Verge. Laurent’s eyes opened, and asked how we knew he was sitting there, at which point Wendy explained that we had eaten at Verge’s restaurant in the past.

Laurent became quite a good friend of ours over the three or four years we went there and he was so pleased with our knowing Verge, that during our first stay he arranged for us to learn how to make, and participate in making, pate de fois gras, one morning in the kitchen. We did that with great enthusiasm, gently handling the fois gras so that it would not melt in our hands, and learning to work quickly with the delicate product. That night, they would not serve the pate until we arrived, so that we would be the first to taste it.

While we never ate at Rostang's restaurant in the south of France, his son became the recognized 3-star chef in Paris, Michel Rostang.

6. The Family Trip to Israel. Wendy and I arranged an extraordinary trip to Israel with all of the kids and Mert and Alma. Jill and Jon had just gotten engaged, and so Jill came too. We arranged for Didier Strosz, a French-Jewish lawyer who had made Aliyah to Israel, to serve as our guide. We had met Didier during one of our earlier American Jewish Committee missions to Israel, and he was extraordinary: fun, bright, interesting, and interested in us as well.

In emails in advance of the trip, I explained that we wanted to do interesting activities for the "kids," not realizing that he thought they might be relatively young. When we finally sorted out that they were young adults, he came up with the idea of hiking around the Bar Kochba caves, since the "kids" were interested in hiking.

So, one afternoon, Didier took the kids to the caves, and Wendy, Mert, Alma and I went to the Israel Museum. I then left them and went to one of the entrances to the walls of Jerusalem, which would give access to a walk around one-half of the parapets of the City. Two different Palestinian families held the keys to access the parapets, or top of the walls, and I paid the fee and then walked halfway around the City. The views were wonderful and, upon returning to the main gate, I descended and walked into the Armenian Quarter, and entered one of my favorite spots, the Armenian Church.

To my great delight and surprise, a ceremony was about to begin, some kind of investiture of young boys of about 10 or 12 years old. Every one of the many hanging candles in the church was lit, the young children were all decked out in vestments, as were many priests; family members were present, and perhaps as many (or few) as 6 or 8 tourists.

No one bothered us, and we simply observed the ceremony involving music, candles, incense, and a depth of commitment by those participating in an ancient ceremony similar to a bar mitzvah or confirmation.

One can never learn in advance of the schedule of such a private religious ceremony and, in fact, guidebooks never even publish the times of church services, in order that they not become overrun by tourists. Learning when they take place, or just happening upon them, fills the usually empty church or cathedral with meaning and color and sound that takes one back to an earlier age.

7. Notre Dame. Wendy and I have made it a practice, if in Paris on a Sunday, to attend mass at Notre Dame, so that we can visit a cathedral filled with people, color, sound, smell, and even light, almost transporting one back to the time when such institutions were the cornerstones of society; providing an excitement rarely available prior to radio, TV and movies.

We once tried to visit the cathedral in Grenada and, even though we dressed as inconspicuously as possible, the guards would not let us in, recognizing that we were not parishioners. The churches and cathedrals have a right to limit their services to their members, but we were sorry to miss seeing a high mass at the Grenada cathedral.

8. Carmona Monastery, Spain. Wendy and I once had the experience of visiting Sevilla, and staying in the neighboring town of Carmona at the monastery from which Ferdinand and Isabella signed the decree expelling the Jews from Spain. There was an eerie feeling being there. Early one morning, we went for a walk in our jogging clothes and, at some point during our tour of the town, approached two elderly women fully clothed in black. In our best, which is quite limited, Spanish, we attempted to say good morning. They turned their backs on us, did not respond, but we heard one mutter to the other “Americanos!” Wendy and I wondered what they would have said if they had realized we were Jews.

9. Hong Kong, Bali and Sulawesi. In February, 1994, Wendy and I visited Hong Kong, Bali and Sulawesi. We landed at the old Hong Kong airport, the flight path of which takes you so close to apartment buildings as you land that you can see people in the windows. But the most extraordinary site of that visit, since we stayed at the Regent Hotel in Kowloon, was the view of all of the Hong Kong towers decorated for the Chinese New Year with colored lights that spanned the entire height and width of the office buildings which carried these extraordinary displays. Some were representational, such as a fish or bird the height of the entire office building, others geometric, but all breathtaking in the scale and the range of colors lighting up the sky as we observed them from our room at the Regent.

Twice we ate at the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor of the Regent, which is known as one of the best restaurants in the world. While having lunch there one day, we read an article by Pat Wells in the International Herald Tribune, in which she wrote about her husband asking her: “if you had to eat every night of the week at one restaurant in the world, which one would you pick?” and she, of course, immediately replied Chez L’Ami Louis! She then described seven different dinners at L’Ami Louis. We however have not tried them all.

It is simply my favorite restaurant in the whole world, and no trip to Paris is complete unless we eat there. I have sent several people there, including Jon and Jill when they went to Paris with friends; Stuart and Judy; and others. In each case, as in our own first experience, you look inside and think it is dingy. However, the food is extraordinary, created by the great late chef, M. Magnin, who wore wooden shoes, and loved to come out after dinner and kiss all the women.

Many years ago the Michelin Guide, which had given him one star, told him that if he would put in a first-class restroom, instead of a toilet on the lower level reachable by a stone staircase with a rope on the side, they would give him two stars. He responded that if those were there standards, take me out entirely, which they did. But on recent visits, there is a better restroom, mandated by Paris food authorities. The restaurant was bought many years ago after Magnin died by an American who keeps it exactly as it always had been. But its fame among French and American foodies has only expanded, and everyone goes there for his special chickens, slabs of foie gras, great wines, along with everything else. I always want to go back there on any trip to Europe.