The professional side of Paris

There’s this famous phenomenon, Paris Syndrome, defined by Wikipedia as “a sense of extreme disappointment exhibited by some individuals when visiting Paris.”

The unmet expectations are so vertiginous that the consequences aren’t just psychological, but often physical too – sufferers have been dogged by insomnia, nausea, and even vomiting as a result of the letdown.

I was in Paris this week and worried, before departing, that I was setting myself up for the syndrome. 

Why? Well Paris has always been a leisure city for me – a place to indulge whims, wander aimlessly, and deny myself nothing. Yet this was a work trip – a few meetings in the city, then two days at a workshop in the small country village of Montfort-l’Amaury. Would Paris be easy to love when I was on the clock? Or would I find myself writhing with disappointment, tortured by all the fun I was missing out on?

Happily, it turns out that professional Paris – and its charming country cousin – is just as satisfying as the Paris I’ve loved since I was in my early 20s. Maybe better, in fact.

It helped, for sure, that I landed a day before the work did. I was fresh off a red-eye when I checked into the Hotel Pulitzer – a charming hotel in a not-so-charming area anchored by Bouillon Chartier - but I permitted myself just an hour-long nap before hitting the streets. I walked south to the Left Bank, where I filled a basket at Citypharma, seriously considered a cheaper-than-Charvet-but still-bougie button-up at Rubirosa’s, and ultimately bought a long-pined-after bag at Collector Square. Back on the Right Bank, I vintage shop-hopped in the Marais, got a massage at Le Fresh Club, and ended the day wandering the Richter exhibit at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. 

I spent much of the next day beyond Paris’ boundary-defining ring road at the headquarters of BETC, a sister agency to the French advertising behemoth that employs me. The company’s imposing brutalist building – formerly an abandoned factory nicknamed “the cathedral of graffiti” – is the centerpiece of efforts to revitalize Pantin, a neighborhood which now counts Chanel, Hermes, and BNP Paribas as tenants. The building has an employee restaurant that serves a multi-course sit-down meal daily – “But of course, we’re French!” said one of my colleagues when I remarked upon it – and more than a mile of balconies circling its exterior. I loved the building, though my taxi driver poo-pooed it, saying it looked like it was still under construction!  

After leaving the office, I got my own multi-course meal at Cinq-Mars, a bistro near the Musee D’Orsay that I first ate at eight years ago while in Paris to pitch the Perrier account. I ate the best chocolate mousse of my life there, took a matchbook on my way out, and have had the restaurant committed to memory ever since. This time I had a quintessential French meal – red wine, pumpkin and chestnut soup, beef bourguignon, scalloped potatoes, probably an entire baguette, and, of course, the mousse. It was perfect.

The next morning, I walked the long way to an early Pilates class in a gorgeous underground cavern at Sense Club. The class was almost as atmospheric as the walk, which took me past the Louvre, Palais Royale, Notre Dame, and other greatest-hits Parisian locations. Then, before I could even mourn leaving the city I love, I was off to Montfort-l’Amaury, a tiny town of 3,000 people about an hour and a half west of Paris.

The occasion was a corporate workshop – eight executives staying together at an incredible home to work on a slightly secretive project during Halloween. Sounds like the premise of a horror movie, no? But, instead, it was a dream. My colleagues – most of them effortlessly chic and enviable French folks, plus one effortlessly chic and enviable Brit – had such a flair for living. There was wine at lunch and aperitifs before dinner and brisk walks around the charming village, where we ducked into cemeteries, oohed and aahed at the local church, and wandered around the ruins of Queen Anne of Brittany’s castle. There was work, of course, lots of it, but it was punctuated by breaks for tea and oranges, by idle chatter, and by standing in the backyard of the house to “get some sun on our faces.” It made me want to live and work entirely differently – to cast aside my ‘shoving Sweetgreen into my mouth over my laptop’ lifestyle in favor of something with a little more, dare I say, joie de vivre.

Now, I’m back at home, pajama-clad and surrounded by the detritus of my kids’ stolen Halloween candy as I type. The glamour of the past week has dissipated, and if not for the vintage haul on the chair next to me, my French pharmacy finds in the bathroom, and my looming to-do list of post-workshop tasks, it might be as if the whole wonderful week never happened. 

Fortunately for me, I get to go back in January, for another round of French corporate je ne sais quoi.