One advantage of transatlantic travel is the early morning rising often following the exhausted tumble into bed after arriving home. I’m taking advantage of the still-dark morning to catch you up on the rest of my trip to Paris.

On the plane home, the man sitting next to me asked what I liked best about my time in Paris. I gave him some stock answer about how it was too difficult to pin down one thing, but the food, parks, perfume, etc., were wonderful. After thinking about it, I came up with a different answer: What I really liked best were the surprises.

For instance, one night March and I had dinner at La Mère Agitée, a tiny restaurant around the corner from our apartment. The Mère herself greeted us with “I’m not ready yet! Another fifteen minutes!” as she rushed between the kitchen and the downstairs dining room despite our having made the reservations the night before at a time she had announced as “parfait“. From the bar (where she was pouring herself a stiff pastis) she said she normally had about five people for dinner, but tonight there’d be twenty. She asked if we wanted a glass of wine, and we suggested maybe a carafe, to which she said “non” then plunked a bottle of peachy Vaucluse white on the table as she whooshed by…

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The last two days have been a whirlwind of walking, perfume, bread, and gulping the beauty of the gorgeous and peculiarly Parisian combination of strict form with ornamentation. I hope you’ll forgive the hasty writing.

On Friday, we met Denyse from Grain de Musc at Café Lemours, an elegant café near the Palais Royal with white-aproned waiters and large jars of jumbled silver forks decorating the windows. Our first stop was Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido (aka Serge Lutens). We walked into the Palais Royal courtyard with its rows of plane trees pruned into boxes, and under the arcades separated from the courtyard with a gold-tipped iron fence.

The Serge headquarters is dim and feels like a harem’s lounging room without the pillows. All of the paneled walls were painted a background of dark blue — or was it black? — with oriental symbols in gold. In the center of the room was a spiral staircase. Lining the edges of the room were glass-topped console tables holding the Serge Lutens fragrances and a row of paper strips, each labeled and spritzed with a different scent. Someone brought us small glasses of hot Marco Polo tea, and we got busy smelling.

When we left the almost meditative world of Serge an hour later, we plunged into the drizzly Parisian air and dodged scooters on our way to Rue St Honoré and the hip “lifestyle” store Colette…

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Coming to Paris was like being inducted into a cult. It started with sleep deprivation — an all nighter on a plane with the only sustenance being a trashy novel, a month of old New Yorkers, and cellophane-wrapped portions of food on a plastic tray. The captain (is it the same captain for every flight? I swear they all sound the same) announced it was 5 degrees in Paris and sunny. At last, the plane pierced a fluffy layer of clouds and we touched ground. I was grateful to leave the dry, cramped quarters of an Airbus to join the river of cranky travelers streaming for the metro.

The train clicked into town, braying a familiar tone when its doors closed. First we passed parking lots and industrial buildings covered in graffiti, then Soviet-style high rise housing complexes. A 19th-century building with a duvet spilling out the window to freshen in the sun and the red diamond of a tabac down the street hinted at the Paris to come. Billboard-sized ads for movies, cheap clothing, and, strangely, for a Paul Auster novel plastered the train stations. Then the train dipped below the city’s surface into the sulfurous air of the Gare du Nord.

Exhausted, hungry, but thrumming with the excitement of having arrived, I emerged from the metro at Pont Royal to motorcycles, students dodging traffic, glorious architecture, and fresh spring wind blowing my hair in my eyes. I had the feeling of having crossed over from real life into a movie…

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