45 - An End of the Season Au Revoir

 

SUMMING UP! 

Plaza Athenée lobby 2013 (photo Martin Woods)

I reminisced last week about that long ago Christmas at the Plaza Athenée.  It was not one of my great hotel experiences.  But.  Every cloud is said to have its silver lining, and this one had a really big bonus, as I made an extraordinary realization about my life and myself that day.  

On Christmas Eve I had checked in before noon, and had lunch in the hotel’s main dining room.  There were very few diners, as everyone was undoubtedly saving up for the big evening meal.  Two friends stopped by for a drink in my room early in the evening before they joined their families for  dinner.

Then late that night I ordered a club sandwich to my room and watched a French documentary about some ordinary people who had won the national lottery.

That started a long chain of reflection, mainly concerned with what wonderful life-changing things I might do if only I, too, could win the lottery.

 First, I decided I would resign from my bureaucratic job at UNESCO.  But to do what?  Not quite sure.  I thought, wow, I could go on to even finer hotels and grander restaurants.  Then:  buy a much bigger apartment, perhaps a country home in Normandy like some of my friends, travel all over the world ... 

But the more I reflected, the more I realized that other than the definite pleasure it might have given me to leave my job, most of  the other things were pretty much already part of my life.

I had no need for grander hotels, because I had already discovered (albeit on a somewhat restrained scale), many of the world’s finest.  Ditto for the restaurants.  After all, where else can you improve on food after Paris.  The fact that I have always needed to budget and make little sacrifices to live this life of mine is what has made it so appreciable.
 

The do-it-yoursaelf stairway

  My apartment?  Certainly a bigger one, but I had already been so fortunate to find the one I had, and I wouldn't have dreamed of leaving my wonderful neighborhood at the foot of Montmartre, just a short walk from the old Paris Opera House.  

  I would have been happy enough to add a room or two, but hardly goals that required winning the lottery, as the future would confirm when I one day had the supreme good fortune to acquire and incorporate what was once the building's stables, thus transforming my apartment into a more roomy duplex with a charming (however creaky) spiral staircase.

 

The apartment's ground floor addition with view of "our" courtyard garden

 As for the country house, well, I've never much cared for the country.  Mowing the lawn and all the inherent decisions involved in maintaining secondary residences hold little or no appeal.

 A snazzy vintage sports car might have seemed a fun thing to spend some of my lottery winnings on, but then I have never owned an automobile since I sold my old Chevy for 50-dollars in 1966, so can’t imagine why I’d suddenly want to change that.  Besides, it’s the last thing you need living in Paris, where public transportation is about as good as it gets, and parking an absolute nightmare.

Of course I never won the lottery, never bought a lottery ticket for that matter.  So there was no question of leaving my job at UNESCO, at least not until I had been there for 25 years.  Long before the possibility of an early retirement, I had reconciled myself with the need to keep going to work like everyone else and pulling in that salary. 

At the same time, I had my art business on the side, and though it never gave me a serious income, it did give me the sense of a more creative identity and also from time to time a financial bonus which allowed me to sample some of the luxuries in life I wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. 


Marguerite socializing at one of my Spring art shows 1992

I understand all this now, but the wonderful thing is that I realized it then.  It was a moment that I have never forgotten, that Christmas of 1989 at the Plaza Athenée when I realized in a kind of euphoric epiphany that winning the lottery wouldn’t have significantly changed anything at all.  Because I already had pretty much the life I had always dreamed of.  

Back to 2013. I no longer give much thought to the lottery, as I know that’s not going to happen.  Today I am more inclined to dream about things I’ve already done, there have been so many!  Then, particularly prodded by the inexhaustible energy of Brenda and her constant need to travel, I also dream of the things I might still do.

Some of them I can’t so much afford any longer.  Whether or not I’ll get around to another voyage around the world or a trip to Myanmar or down to South America remains to be seen.  

It may reveal a lack of imagination, but for the moment I dream of returning to some of the finer places I knew in the early days, when I first started this life of hotel hopping.

Most of the hotels of my fondest memories have become less accessible today, but who knows.  It looks like another trip to the recently renovated Gritti Palace in Venice just might be in the cards in the Autumn.   I haven’t been back to Sicily to The Timeo --my first really exquisite hotel experience-- in over 30 years.  It has been taken over in recent years by the luxury group Orient Express; prices are a little daunting, and I fear it might not hold up to my memories.  But there again, who knows? At the least, I may just have to make do with lunch at the Paris Ritz whenever it decides to re-open, hopefully sometime in 2014.

Another of my dreams is to continue this blog in one form or another, but for the moment I have exhausted my supply of hotel musings.  So I’ll take a summer break, and come back soon.

This seems like an appropriate time to thank everyone who has supported these musings until now.  I have been really thrilled with the response and the fact that comments have regularly come in from literally the four corners of the globe.  Some supporters are part of my present day life; some are friends from lives in the past; and others, readers who have simply emerged from the invisible cyber world which still seems totally futuristic to me.

A special and heartfelt thank-you to Brenda and Dickie, who have been remarkable editors, giving me pertinent advice every week, encouraging me to rethink a word, a sentence, occasionally a whole posting.  Always with a beneficial result, despite my sometimes tendency to resist.  

Brenda and Dickie at l'Hotel, Paris 2013

This will just be an au-revoir.  Don’t hesitate to scroll back to any of the 45 musings you may have missed, they won’t be  going anywhere, probably not for many years.  Thanks again for reading so far, and hope to see you back after the vacations.

Your input is welcomed:  hotel-musings@hotmail.fr

[Photos are mine, unless otherwise credited]

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

The Plaza Athenée was also featured in blog No. 44, "The Best and the Worst " July 5, 2013;   No. 33, "Breakfasts in the 1970's" April 19, 2012; and No. 13 "Those Silver-Spooned Children" Nov. 23, 2012(to access, click on above titles).