I’ll Travel All the Way to Paris for a Few Drops of This Drugstore Oil

(Bloomberg) -- Here at Bloomberg Pursuits, we know most of your plans are on hold. Ours are, too! But that doesn’t mean we’re not daydreaming about the trips, meals, and other worldly delights that we’ll rush out to experience once it’s safe again to do so. We’re sharing our ideas with you in the hopes that they will help inspire you—and we’d love to hear what you’re daydreaming about, too. Send us your thoughts and plans at daydreams@bloomberg.net, and we’ll flesh some of them out for you in future versions of this column so we can help you make them a reality.

“This virus has halted the routine of the day to day and impelled us, in a rare reflex from our usual hustling, to seek purification.” —Paul Theroux

Purification comes in many forms—hand-washing, of course, but also the sort of self-care rites performed at home that refresh creative reserves and renew familial relationships. Or simply rebuild overworked muscles and restore tired skin.

For me, such purification has meant hours spent listening to the Chromatics and Lou Doillon and Leonard Cohen. Going for walks. Eating soups and curries far more nourishing than my habit under previous conditions. Making personal phone calls (something I typically abhor). Taking long baths and indulging in facial masks promising collagen-plumped cheeks and coal-purified pores.

It’s the baths that got me thinking about Paris. I’ve found myself daydreaming about visiting its glowing lights and secret alleys once again soon, after the pandemic passes.   

Paris came to mind because my bathing ritual of late has been to apply several drops of oil on my skin once I leave the tub. The type I use—of a golden hue in a square jar, with a scent I can identify only with and as Paris—can be found in every corner pharmacie from Montmartre to the Marais. It’s inexpensive drugstore stuff but also perfect in that magical way French women seem to improve with age as their skin remains supple, interesting, and wise. 

I first started buying it five or 10 years ago (who can say, really—Paris bends time in mystical ways), when car shows and product launches and driving rallies and long-weekend jaunts started taking me regularly through France’s beating heart. It felt like a secret indulgence to pop into a drugstore and purchase a bottle while wandering cobbled streets, on my way toward buying some antique I can’t live without at Les Puces flea market or lighting a candle at Jim Morrison’s grave.  

When all this is over, I can’t wait to go back. I’ll stay at Le Bains Paris, a tantalizing boutique hotel in the Marais neighborhood. It forever endeared itself to me last year after a long car rally, winding throughout rural France to St-Tropez and back, landed my boyfriend and me in the worst hotel I’ve ever visited.

Set in the seedy outskirts of sprawling Paris, in an arrondissement that might as well have been the rings around Saturn, that hotel lacked anything so luxurious as a cafe or bar or dining room on the premises; it lacked anything so welcoming as room service, or a coffee pot, or even bottled water and towels in the room. And, oh, the room. Walls lined in shiny black vinyl sagging in the corners; ceiling covered in dirty, smoke-stained mirrors; black shag carpet stained in clumps of a milky white substance that looked like it had been, um, sprayed; a single vinyl-covered couch pushed along the wall and held together at the seams with black electrical tape and misery. We asked to see another room, which returned even more greasy results, then deliberated about propriety for 30 minutes before promptly exiting stage left.

We landed at Le Bains. It was liking ascending from hell to heaven. A very chic heaven. The five-star hotel started life in 1885 as home to Paris’s first private thermal baths, then became the legendary nightclub Les Bains Douches in 1975 (Grace Jones, Catherine Deneuve, Sean Penn, and Johnny Depp were regulars; Depeche Mode and Prince played there often). Now it has a bistro with outdoor patios; a stylish bar lit like my favorite arthouse film fantasy; and 39 rooms of white marble, exotic wood, artworks, antiquarian books, and bespoke furniture. The spa includes a vitality pool, steam rooms, a swimming pool, and specialized treatments.

Shaken to the core after the grueling car rally (that day alone we’d completed 12 hours behind the wheel in a pounding rain) and the homemade-porn-suitable hotel we’d just fled, we were welcomed with open arms into Le Bains. The manager met us on the lobby steps and offered food, drinks, and emotional balm for the duration of our stay. On our way out that evening, heading for a martini at Andy Wahloo, we greeted a handsome older man who smiled at us getting into the elevator. We later found out he was the owner, as he gave us his personal card to provide for any future requests. It was the single best example of hospitality I’ve ever experienced.

On the way to Andy Wahloo, a most excellent and hidden cocktail bar, then and now and as soon as I find my way back, I’ll stop to pay respects at Serge Gainsbourg’s house—maybe hum a Jane Birkin tune along the way. Then hit Hotel Amour, Andre Saraiva’s spot on the Rue de Navarin, for the skillet-baked pasta or house wine and steak frites. Another night it might be the hamburger at Café Charlotte—impenetrable during Fashion Week, and no big secret, but otherwise friendly and spacious enough during the rest of the year. It’s the source of the best burger in Paris, for when you’re feeling especially American.

Daytime, I’ll walk the gardens in the Tuileries and peruse the shops along Rue Saint-Honoré. Although they look foreboding and elite from the outside, the staff at YSL and Tom Ford are always gracious inside their doors. And late afternoons are made perfect with a massage at one of the Thai salons that dot the hill coming down from Montmartre. The upstanding of their lot are professional, thorough, and absolutely calming in their ancient practice. One hour in their confines will go far in smoothing out anxiety accumulated during this quarantine.

And, of course, so will that body oil.

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