FRANCE 2026 by Jennie Hart

credit: Jennie Hart

I love Paris in the springtime

I love Paris in the fall

I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles

Ooh, I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles

Well, we’re in Paris and it’s January and, like the song says, I love every single moment! Parisiens and tourists, wrapped in warm boots and winterwear, hurry to their rendez-vous, and I’m excited as we check in to Les Marronniers, our hotel in Rue Jacob. It’s stylish and cosy and two tall marronniers with spindly branches, struggle in the small exotic garden, drawn by the light.

We walk for miles through meandering streets. Skies are pale and dull, no brightness. I browse the windows of tiny boutiques, each competing for a design award. Striking colours, muted shades; displays of haute-couture or costly jewelry; expensive watches, Cartier, not Cassio; and glorious eyewear, Rayban and Prada; pure eye jewels. I don’t desire it but can’t stop looking. John is concentrating on the street map; he’s a geographer.

The Seine is calm, in sombre shades of brown and grey with barely observable ripples, except when a barge or bateau-mouche sails by. Notre Dame, recently saved from an uncertain future, is an imposing presence on the íle de la Cité. We queue to admire the restoration, but once inside there’s no peace; throngs of tourists are chattering and their phones are flashing; It is not at all tranquil.

One evening we go to Le Caveau de la Huchette, a jazz club where we’ve been before but tonight it’s past our bedtime! Last time we felt comfortable amongst a similar generation and while John bought drinks I danced with a strange but charming Frenchman. Tonight, it’s swarming with young people and there’s a lively Norwegian band with a saxophonist, guitarist and vocalist. We sway around a bit, jam-packed on the tiny floor, feeling the rhythm and the beat, and feeling so old!

In the Latin Quarter we go into the Pantheon, and it is entrancing. It’s a mausoleum with magnificent tombs and beautiful sculptures of the famous; Rousseau, Voltaire, Marie Curie. It’s a resting place for those who believed in liberté, egalité and fraternité. I never knew what lay within this most mysterious building but now I will never forget it.

We eat at Le Grenier, a vegetarian restaurant close to Notre-Dame; we’ve eaten there in the past and like its easy ambience and delicious food. This time we are less relaxed because in the corner where we eat, it’s like a jungle; we are surrounded by drooping, neglected plants and I find myself picking off dead leaves and looking for greenfly; those annoying little creatures!

Today we take the TGV to Nice, in comfortable seats with rapidly changing views. I like the train; I like the sense of travelling south and leaving the north behind. As we near the Cóte d’Azur I can almost smell the aromat ic perfumeof the mediterranean garrigue. The landscape is subtly changing to silver, sienna and yellow ochre, like colours on a paint chart. There’s a distinct change in architectural style too, buildings in the north seem more austere, like the climate, whereas in the south they are pale and honey-toned with tiled roofs in shades of soft sand or warm terracotta.

We like the Riviera in January and in Nice, Antibes and Eze, I can’t stop taking pictures. Of the beautiful palms, the Umbrella pines and flowering tender shrubs which in winter at home, survive only indoors. We see Acacias, known as Mimosas with their tiny pom-pom flowers in sunny golden hues and I am entranced by the paving; black and white, black and grey, speckled granite; squares, rectangles; my camera collects them all.

Statley pine and spruce stand unadorned, while elegant palms have trunks entwined with strings of lights that gleam as dusk falls. They stand like sentinels along Le Promenade des Anglais, proud of their importance.

We meet up with a friend from Bridgnorth. Dave arrived on Boxing Day and has been living the Niçois life. He rarely takes holidays and it’s been a fabulous experience he says. He has mastered the trams and buses, and we know he’s having the holiday of a lifetime. I don’t understand the trams either and am astonished when I receive a forty euro fine, the penalty for fraud. I am now a criminal!

Today it rains and rains, not just drizzle, a deluge; the sky is heavy, none of that Riviera luminescence, but with umbrellas we hurry along Le Promenade and visit Le Musées des Beaux Arts and Le Musée de la Photographie. In the latter gallery there’s an exhibition by Michael Kenna, born in the Northern English town of Widnes. John is a huge rugby league fan and more likely to mention that town in connection with the Widnes Vikings, one of the original rugby clubs to found the Northern Rugby Football Union in 1895. Michael Kenna’s images are captured in black and white, unusual and striking.

We move on by train again to Aix -en-Provence, a charming city, inland from Marseille. Our apartment is named ‘Toits Vieil Aix’, the Occitan for ‘Old Roofs of Aix’. We look out on roofs in black and terracotta and on chimneys, tall and short with quaint caps and cowls. We buy fresh vegetables in Place Richelme and walk along the main boulevard, Cours Mirabeau. A young female jazz musician plays the guitar and sings in English and French, and a black saxophonist performs ‘Paris at Night’ by Yves Montand in a bluesey style.

Cézanne lived and painted in Aix and we watch a film telling his life story. From the window on the train en route to Marseille with its lively harbour life, we see Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain Cézanne painted often, and I take a hazy image through the dust-streaked window.

We go home via Paris and visit Notre-dame again. A service is taking place and the chanting is spiritual and haunting; I can hear it still.