Vistas Galore, Clear Air, In Downtown Paris

Bird's Eye View, Cheaper Than La Tour d'Argent

After a morning heavy with being mobile to do your essentials, whether they are domestic or touristic, you may feel the need to rest your poor feet. It may be a daily habit, or a lifelong dream, to pass a bit of 'quality' time on the terrace of a sidewalk cafe.

There are hundreds of them and some are even open in August, especially downtown. Although it is winter in Paris most of the time, and many of the sidewalk cafes are constructed to be useable year-round, the 'real thing' is still the completely outdoor sidewalk cafe. What are they for? Well, Paris is meant to be walked. When you get tired of walking, you are supposed to sit down to watch other people walking. If they are really a lot of walkers, this can be like musical chairs, but that is not the point. Sitters watch walkers, and walkers strut their stuff for sitters. It's kinda fine.

But in this August? In front of this busstop? In front of all these cars, trucks, taxis, idling at the red light? In front of this horde of walkers? On the sunny side of the street? And where has that waiter gone for 'glacons'; to Antarctica?

If you are on boulevard Haussmann, near the department stores Printemps or Galeries Lafayette, or cooking at the north end of the Pont Neuf across from La Samaritaine, there is something positive and good for the soul and soles, that you can do.

Go in any of them, find the central elevators or escalators, and go up as high as you can, to the sixth, seventh or eighth floors. Ask your way if you have to, but do it. All these department stores have restaurants up there. Air conditioned with views.

Above the restaurants, Galeries Lafayette and Samaritaine, have open-air terraces as well. Not only that, they both have, get this: 'sidewalk' cafes up there too.

Okay, so there's no great crowd of walkers up there, neither is there usually a great crowd of sitters, not counting birds. Street-level disadvantages are absent, even noise is distant. And there are these.... views; almost personal, not like the 'model' town layouts you get from the Tour Eiffel or the Tour Montparnasse.

From Lafayette, the white space shuttle parked on top of Montmartre is... so close. The back of the Opera is not so wonderful, so look instead either east or west. Samaritaine, with Pont Neuf at its feet, is right there on the Seine with all the implication of that. Be ready to make your own low-level aerial photos.

Some eight floors above boulevard Haussmann, you will find this pleasant refuge in top of Galeries Lafayette.

The cafe on top of Lafayette looks like a terrace of a country auberge; beams, vines, shade. The cafe on top of Samaritaine is more like a beach deck in Trouville with parasols. Both cafes are simple; there are snacks and limited bars, but good service - used to multilingual customers. Prices are not seven stories higher than on the street; maybe a franc more, if at all.

Looking down and southwest, from panorama platform above Samaritaine terrace cafe, on ninth floor.

The roof of Samaritaine is so great, that I cranked up my curiosity enough to learn that it is only closed Sundays; otherwise it is open from 9:30 - for breakfast! - until store closing at 6:30 pm, and on Thursdays, is open until 9:30 pm. If this were not enough, there is a circular panorama terrace another flight up - watch your headroom on the narrow stairs.

There is no entry charge to either of these open-air terraces.

Expense account highlife in Brasserie Flo, under dome in Printemps; with part of Mr Barth.

Go up to the top of Printemps and you come to the.... Dome. Galeries Lafayette has an equally impressive dome too, and don't miss it, but under Printemps', you can have a pretty unshabby lunch at the restaurant there run by the Brasserie Flo people - just as I did recently with Norman Barth, the head push of these very same Paris Pages - Les Pages de Paris, for our linguistic readers.

While Norman is extroverted enough to love Paris and do something useful about it, like staying up all night to handle his correspondent's copy, he declined to be interviewed for this piece, which is kind of unusual for a worldwide interactive media mogul - but there you go: it takes all types.

The cool, in temperature as well as colour, atmosphere under Printemps' dome, was somehow dreamily hypnotic; and we just lounged around there for about two hours after we finished eating - instead of rushing back to the mean, hot, boulevard another world away, down below, in Paris.

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Updated 07/95