Paris for art lovers

16.11.2023 - 17:51 / theguardian.com / Jim Morrison

The opening of a new hotel, a new gallery and two compelling exhibitions in two of my favourite galleries made a pre-Christmas Eurostar dash to Paris irresistible. The draw of the 91-room Bloom House Hotel & Spa, which opened in September (new beds, new everything equals no bedbugs!), is that you can get off the Eurostar at Gare du Nord after a stress-free journey and be having lunch in their courtyard garden oasis 10 minutes later. A green-tiled pond is the focal point, a pergola strung with festoon lighting overhead – perfect for evening cocktails.

We spent our first afternoon exploring the bobo Canal Saint-Martin, a short walk from Bloom House. The 4.5km canal, which stretches through the 10th and 11th arrondissements down to the Seine, is peppered with indie stores, delis and cafés. Following the Quai de Valmy, we dropped into Antoine & Lili, a set of three shops with a sunflower facade. I swooned over their velvet, just-so flared trousers. More swooning, this time for clothing and curios new and old, in Babel (55 Quai de Valmy), a brocante and déco-cadeaux store a few doors down.

I didn’t know I needed une boule of vegan pear with tonka bean sorbet until I saw the queue outside Sucre Glace, an artisanal ice-cream shop nearby (61 Quai de Valmy; you can see the escargot’s pace we moved at). But that’s one of the joys of being on holiday in Paris: beautiful confections are everywhere. They entice. It’s rude to ignore them. As we crossed one of the canal’s many iron bridges, a tourist barge passed beneath us; take a boat trip yourself with Canauxrama or Paris Canal. Not all stretches of this once industrial area are picture-perfect, though. The trick is to explore the sidestreets; that’s how we stumbled upon the Jardin Villemin, on the corner of Rue des Récollets. This community garden in the grounds of a former convent-turned-military hospital has a playground, lots of lovely old trees, and even a lawn you can walk or lie on.

After a sauna and a swim in the bijou spa back at the mellow Bloom House, we headed off to Poulette, a buzzy neighbourhood bistro near Les Halles and the Pompidou Centre with local friends; we sat on stools at the zinc bar and relished the baked figs with honey and thyme. But lunch at Eunoé the next day, following a visit to Père-Lachaise cemetery, where we paid homage to Jim Morrison, Modigliani, Colette and Proust, took the madeleine. In Proustian spirit, the strapline of this gem of a new French-Japanese restaurant off Place Maurice Gardette in the 11th arrondissement is: “A Parisian restaurant evocative of memories to create new ones.”

Well, I remember the beetroot velouté, a subtle affair that converted me to a root vegetable I rarely enjoy. As for the dessert of baked