No. 5 “Arrival”
We landed at Charles De Gaulle, Paris’ international airport at 10 in the morning. As we disembarked, a lovely African woman with short cropped hair, full red lips and a trench coat was standing on the jet way with an ipad with my name on it. I followed her to a locked elevator that took us outside the building.
The expansiveness of the airport spread out around me. I felt a precarious freedom, a light headed sense of danger. Its an unsettling feeling, to see the A380 from the ground, a massive white bumble bee with a blunt nose. After a lifetime of being in airports, looking down from safety of the terminal or the cocoon of the plane at all the tugs and trucks servicing that plane, here I was down at the bottom looking up. I know that I am a foreigner in this restricted place, and follow my attendant to the car.
The car was a black 2018 BMW 745i. It was a car to make Darth Vader proud. My husband had a BMW a couple years ago. I didn’t like it much, as the whole car seemed to be made of plastic. But this car didn’t have that feel. The doors were heavy, and closed with a satisfying thump. The leather was sumptuous and cool. There was a huge armrest in the center of the back seat with cup holders and a tissue holder. Our attendant got into the driver’s seat and began to drive.
I don’t know if most airports are like this, but the street level of Charles de Gaulle is total chaos. The road we took swerved this way and that, went under buildings and conveyor belts. We almost sideswiped barriers and overtook pokey transport vans. I felt a nearly overwhelming sense of privilege, to be witnessing the dirty, grimy workings of an international airport from the spacious comfort of an automobile whose price would command four Honda Civics - the car I drive at home - especially when most of everyone else on the plane had to *gasp* walk to passport control.
We parked by an unmarked door and went into a dank, low ceilinged room with five lines: passport control. Our attendant took us to the shortest line and we did that ever so international thing - the presentation and stamp of our passports - and began the long walk to baggage claim.
After a completely circuitous and mindbendingly complicated walk, we made it to baggage claim. Where we waited. And waited. Part of the La Premiere service is that your bags are supposed to come out first. But they didn’t. Two other attendants with my fellow first class passengers started freaking out, because, as this is France, things like this are very important. A phone call was made and they found out the people who were unloading the plane started at the wrong end. One guy began to get huffy, which made the attendants feel worse. But there was nothing we could do.
We got our bags then our attendant lead us to the gate where all the international travelers emerge into the world. Again, there was a man with an iPad that had my name on it and I followed him, across lanes of traffic, uneven sidewalks into a cramped parking lot to his Mercedes minivan for the hour long trip into Paris.
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The Hotel de Crillon is located on the Place de la Concorde, at the foot of the Champs d'Elysee. It's been there since 1758 when it was built by Louis XV to house the offices of the French state. There is an identical building, just to the east across the Rue Royale, called the Hotel de la Marine, that housed the French navy up until 2015.
Its quite famous for several reasons. Treaties between the newly formed United States and France were signed there in 1778. In 1788, it was acquired by François Félix de Crillon, the son of the Duke of Crillon, which is where it got its name. Soon after, in 1791, during the heat of that little skirmish they call the French Revolution, the building was confiscated by the provisional government, but François Félix’s last name stuck. During this time, it was used to house Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, until in 1793, they were guillotined on the Place de la Concorde directly in front of the building.
Unbelievably, the hotel was returned to the descendents of the Duke of Crillon after the revolution, who lived there for over 100 years, until 1907, when it was acquired by the Societe du Louvre. It was then renovated, and opened as a hotel in 1909.
Since then, the Hotel de Crillon has become known as one of the most luxurious hotels in Paris, which is saying something in a city known to house the most luxurious places in the world. Its 18th century colonnade has presided over the Place de la Concorde for over 250 years, including in 2006 when Anne Hathaway dropped her phone in the bronze and gilt fountain in its center after she abandoned Meryl Streep in the film “The Devil Wears Prada.”
In 2010, the Hotel was acquired by the Saudi Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. In 2013, the Prince hired the Lebanese-Parisienne interior designer Aline Asmar D’Amman to renovate the hotel. Karl Lagerfeld oversaw the suites. €200 million and four years later, in 2017, the hotel opened in its current incarnation. Two years after that, in June of 2019, I walked through its front door for the first time.