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Fountainebleu
"It's too darn hot." — Cole Porter, Kiss Me, Kate
It’s 96 degrees outside and Adam, Marie, and I have settled inside the café for lunch where the air conditioning is on. It’s on, but it’s not the kind of cool down I had come to expect in restaurants back home. But anything is better than being out in the heat.
As we entered, Marie informed the waiter that it was my 50th birthday. Of course, it’s not, and I denied it, but then Adam took up the story and confirmed that it was indeed my birthday. I let the joke lie. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch with a lot of laughs and the food was excellent. We sat there for almost two hours. As we finished lunch, the waiter brought a delicious French pastry dessert to the table with a flaming torch. There was an attempt at singing and applause from the restaurant crowd. It was a moment I won’t forget and I have now added a second annual birthday in my calendar.
In the discussion over lunch, I came to the decision to leave the city and escape the heat for a couple of days. It was just too hot to stay in my Paris apartment. I had managed for the last two days, with cold showers, an oscillating fan, and all the curtains drawn. But it was as if I were living in a warm dark cave, and I don’t like living in dark caves even if they’re cool. In short, I wasn’t having fun and old men just wanna have fun.
That afternoon, I searched for hotels outside of Paris and I finally settled on the Aigle Noir hotel in Fontainebleau, about 67 km from my apartment. It’s a stunning hotel, blessedly air-conditioned and with a gourmet breakfast buffet. The hotel has been there since 1764 and sits across the street from the Château de Fontainebleau, home to thirty-four kings and two emperors including Napoleon Bonaparte. It is also close to the Fontainebleau Forest.
The next morning at 10:00 AM with the temperature already at 92 degrees, I left the apartment. After three trains, one bus, three bottles of water, a ten-minute walk in the sun, and lots of opportunities to practice my French, I arrived at the hotel. I felt like I had just journeyed across the French Sahara. I arrived looking as if I had run a 5K in the heat with my backpack.
I was early. My room wasn’t ready. It wouldn’t be ready for two hours. I suddenly felt like I had crossed the finish line only to realize that I had to stay on the other side of the line before the bell would ring. I took it well. Kinda well. Okay, with a small glimmer of agonizing deep depression and a consuming sense that the world had once again betrayed me. I get like that. It’s always about me sometimes. Thank goodness it stays in my head.
I was a mafted fellow. Which is a new English word I learned. It means "oppressed or stifled, especially by heat; exhausted from heat, crowds, or exertion." Yep, that captured it.
I checked my backpack and headed back out in the heat. It was a short walk across the street to the Jardin de Diane, a garden once enjoyed by the queens of France, including Marie Antoinette. The garden takes its name from the fountain where four bronze hunting hounds spout water around Diane the Huntress, the Roman goddess they serve. I found a bench in the shade and started writing this while on my fourth bottle of water.
At 3:00 PM, I entered my air-conditioned room, took a well-deserved cold shower and a nap. That evening, I enjoyed what was possibly the best spaghetti dinner I have ever had, with the possible exception of my Aunt Laura’s. It was at the Deme restaurant, a 10-minute walk from my hotel. After dinner, I enjoyed two scoops of ice cream at the shop just outside my hotel. A scoop of lemon and a scoop of violet (made from flowers).
It was, after all, a good couple of days. For one flaming-pastry moment I was fifty again and starting over. I could get used to that and will keep my second birthday.
Tomorrow it's the château and the forest. It’s forecasted to be very hot again, but for now, with the violet ice cream still fresh on my tongue and only fifty years behind me, I couldn't care less.
Too darn hot, Cole. But also, somehow, just right.
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