Review: Living at the Lancaster Hotel

  When my godmother was a young girl, she arrived in Paris with her mother and sister, chauffeur and governess, and trunks filled with white lace gloves, sheet music, and parasols. For three years they lived in the center of Paris at 7, rue de Berri, where my godmother labored over her French and practiced the piano daily. However, she was limited to particular hours of practice, as her neighbor, Sophia Loren, would knock hard at the door, begging my godmother, in her patent-leather Mary Jane’s and pigtails, ignorant of Ms. Loren’s status, to “please keep it down.” Ms. Loren learned to enjoy the plunkety-plunk of my godmother’s tiny fingers on the black and white keys, as did other neighbors, including Rex Harrison. My godmother’s face lights up whenever she talks about her years in Paris as a young girl. Her very best friend still lives in the 14th arrondissement in an apartment overlooking the cemetery. And my godmother has promised to come and pay us both a visit on which she will stay in the same quarter where she lived so many years ago at 7, rue de Berri in the Lancaster Hotel. Over the week of Thanksgiving, my mother and brother came to Paris for a visit, during which we ate no turkey, but their company filled me more than any amount of stuffing or mashed potatoes ever could. My family was invited to stay at the Lancaster Hotel; however, I decided it would too much of a hassle to carry a change of clothes down my seven flights of stairs, so I planned to reside in my small studio for the week….that was until on the early Sunday afternoon of their arrival, when I was introduced to the Lancaster. I woke up every 20 minutes the night before my mom and brother Travis arrived in Paris. I was paranoid that somehow both of the alarm clocks I had set would manage to malfunction, and I would be robbed of the time necessary to properly groom myself and run to Paul bakery to purchase a few delightful snacks, so that Travis and my mom would not be starving while they unpacked. I gave myself 45 minutes to find the hotel, even though its website showed that the métro stop was George V, only two stops from my studio–I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to find the hotel once out of the métro. I mapped out my route on my Plan de Paris and was prepared to go and rescue my family from their temporary foreign home and take them someplace quiet and charming (probably in the 6th arrondissement) where my brother could pretend to listen to me and my mom chat over a pot of tea. I was met at the top of the George V on the Champs-Elysées stairs by huge gusts of icy wind, causing my slightly warm Paul bag, filled with miniature bread men with cranberries for eyes, to rustle and the pages of my Plan de Paris to fly all over the place. Too cold to deal with trying to find the right map again, I hurried away from the Arc de Triomphe and waited on the corner for the light to change so that I could cross the street. I peeled my eyes for the rue de Berri sign and was pleasantly surprised to find it on the very next corner. I made a left and arrived at number 7 only moments later. I laughed at my paranoia of not being able to find the hotel–me with no sense of direction. Well, if I hadn’t followed the extremely simple directions offered on the site, I would have bumped into the hotel by chance. A very tall, thin doorman held the large glass doors for me. I walked along the beautiful polished white floor, luminous from the soft light of the coachmen’s lanterns, into the reception area, where I was greeted by two smiles and a warm fireplace. I asked if my mother, Madame Guenther, had arrived and was told that she and my brother were taking coffee in the Salon Berri. I walked straight ahead through another pair of glass doors, these propped open. This time I was greeted by preserved antiques and exquisite paintings ( all originals), a library-like bar that reminded me of the one in Cole Porter’s High Society in which Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra sing “Well, Did You Evah?” My mom and Travis, drinking cappuccinos, were seated around a low table and looking out onto a gorgeous patio filled with greenery. I could only imagine what it must be like in the summer when the flowers are in bloom. The three of us sat in the Salon Berri while I had a café crème and they each ordered another cappuccino. They told me about the movies on the plane that they were able to stay awake for and the meals they ate or rather picked at. I was so relaxed, I didn’t want to get up when the man with the endearing smile behind the reception desk called us to say that the suite was ready. Mom, Travis, and I followed him into the elevator–they had to tell me to hurry up as I was distracted by the case of precious jewelry that I am sure someday someone who loves me will purchase pour moi. Even the elevator was beautiful. Generally, even in some of the nicest hotels in Paris the elevator is worn–missing panels of wood here or there, or the floor has splinters–one hotel even had some sort of strange astro-turf like material protecting the elevator chamber floor. The elevator took us up to the 4th floor, where at the end of the hallway we were met by a huge pair of double wooden doors, the kind that always requires one of those ancient giant gold keys. The plaque on the door read “Emile Wolf” suite. Monsieur Emile Wolf was at one time the owner of 7, rue de Berri, which was not originally a hotel but four separate apartments owned by the Castillo family. When Wolf purchased the property in 1925, he did so with the intention of turning it into a grand hotel during his ownership, which is exactly what he did, naming it after the city of Lancaster in…