Paris, already the most visited city in the world, will see tourism off the charts this summer as the French capital welcomes millions of travelers to the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Taking place between July 26 and Aug. 11, the games will be the biggest event, sporting or otherwise, ever held in France, and Paris, as the nerve center, is already heavily booked.
That said, here are two contrasting Paris hotels, recently checked out by yours truly, which as we go to press still have some summer availability. Neither could provide a finer base for any of the Paris Games, or, of course, for a séjour any time in the City of Lights.
“What is the purpose of your stay?” and “How many suitcases will you have?” read the first two questions on the pre-check-in form sent to me by Le Grand Mazarin, as it turned out an utterly charming, newly-opened boutique hotel in the heart of the always trendy Marais district, just steps from the colonnaded Rue de Rivoli.
If I was momentarily put off – those questions did, after all, sound a bit pre-glasnost in tone – I needn’t have been. Arriving at the hotel, a line of four smiling receptionists was waiting to greet me, while Victor, the doorman, whisked my one and only bag away. Lisa checked me in within seconds, offering me a drink that I declined. “If you don’t fancy it now, come back for it later,” she said, in perfect English and with a grin.
With its herringbone-wood floors, canopied bed with rich tapestry backdrop and minibar resembling a veritable grocery store, my room was warm and inviting. A courtyard view brought ample light. In the small but exquisite bathroom, done in the Moroccan Art Deco style, the scent of the soap was so heady it almost transported me to another place. Not that I wanted to be anywhere else but right where I was – the lighting a dream; classical music playing; the welcome heightened by a handwritten note from management and a waiting bottle of Taittinger Champagne on ice. Pretty darn chic.
In Le Grand Mazarin’s restaurant, Boubalé – a French play on the Yiddish word bubbaleh, a term of endearment usually reserved for a child – hotel owners Leslie Kouhana and Kimberley Cohen Pariente’s Ashkenazi roots are to the fore. This room has a distinctly mittel-European vibe – upright wooden chairs; lampshades with ruffles; lace accents; and Yiddishe songs – mixed with some folksy French ones – played at low volume.
Chef Assaf Granit fuses traditionally plodding recipes from Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine with more exotic, sunnier ones from Iraq, Morocco and Syria to come up with a glorious hybrid. For two days, I feasted on culturally diverse yet somehow cohesive dishes like kaved katzutz (chicken livers with caramelized onions), sea bream with pine nuts and Persian sabzi (a kind of herbed stew). At breakfast, along with the usual yogurts, pastries and fruit compotes, there were also superbly creamy scrambled eggs with mushrooms and the perfect Americano (which the French call café alongé,) served in a cup the size of a boat.
Thank you, Grand Hotel Mazarin. I’ll be back.
For an entirely different Paris hotel experience, Hôtel Barrière Le Fouquet’s is older- established but still boutique in nature, despite its 104 rooms and suites. It also has a very fancy, 8th arrondisement address, at the corner of Avenue des Champs-Elysées and Avenue George V. Which is not to say it’s remotely stuffy or conventional, because it certainly isn’t.
Le Fouquet’s, which stands next to the historic Champs-Elysées restaurant of the same name, is sumptuous, sensual and very sexy. First, there are those handsome doormen (beauty sells), with long dark coats so sleek and elegant that reputable women (and, for all I know, reputable men) might just want to rip them off their backs; and young, on-the-ball front desk staff and concierges who seem to know exactly what you want before you even realize it yourself.
Then there is the decoration, always whimsical, even the tiniest touch louche: paneled walls, ormolu clocks, richly upholstered sofas you just want to sink into, velvet drapes and – goodness me – is that a stuffed peacock on the piano? Not everybody’s tasse de thé, I admit, but certainly a very stylish cup of tea nevertheless.
Even entry-level guest rooms are large here, with luxurious furnishings, beautiful etched-glass lamshades and linen thread-counts bordering on the stratospheric. And there is no soak like a long soak in a black marble tub in one of Le Fouquet’s’ beautifully appointed guest bathrooms, where you lather up with Diptyque soap, the very height of decadence. More water? At 50 feet in length, the Spa Diane Barrière’s indoor pool, with its aquatic circuit of jets and counter-current lanes, is unique in Paris.
Next door the hotel, entrance to the famous Fouquet’s brasserie, with its iconic gold and vermillion sign, is via a red carpet, vacuumed several times a day, with a rope to keep the crowds from the street at bay, as they wait for entry to one of Paris’s most glorious restaurants rooms and a menu “re-enchanted” by world-renowned chef Pierre Gagnaire. What to eat? It’s all magnifique, but on no account miss the profiteroles dessert with Polignac almonds and chocolate ganache.
Whatever you come for, whenever you come, Paris in all its glory awaits at these two delicious hotels. Let the fun (and the Games) begin.
For more, visit legrandmazarin.com and hotelsbarriere.com.
Travel Talk’s Jeremy Wayne is a luxury travel adviser with Superior Travel of New York. Contact him at jeremy@superiortravel.com.
