Paris Diaries: April 7, 2022

Free truffle pasta, lots of stuffed animals, and van Gogh's ear

April 7, Paris, France

My girlfriend and I hadn’t intended to visit Paris again so soon. We last visited in October 2021 when our friend ran the marathon. We came ostensibly to cheer, and we did cheer, but we also came to eat croissants and baguettes and to walk around and pretend to be Parisian and to remind ourselves what it feels like to be abroad.

That was the third time we had visited, whether together or separate. So the fourth time could wait, we would go somewhere new, we decided, somewhere we both hadn’t been. Then the Eurostar, cunning bastards that they are, put a sale on, and by bedtime we had booked trains and hotels.

Everyone wants to come to Paris, whatever they say. There are those who pretend they don’t like it or that it doesn’t appeal, that there are places they want to go to more - don’t trust these people. Just get on the train and eat your croissant, you’ll feel better.

---

Having said all that about croissants and baguettes, the first stop of the trip was the Italian restaurant Pink Mamma. If it’s not the best restaurant in Paris, it’s definitely the most photogenic. Its top floor, which I’m sure you’ll agree is expertly photographed above, had a crowd of people all queueing for the best shot.

Soon-to-be-viral posts taken, the food. There is a menu, but Instagram has your back here too. The truffle pasta looked incredible online, it looked incredible in person. I ordered it and in the end got to discover how much truffle pasta is too much truffle pasta.

You know when you order a takeaway and it comes suspiciously quickly? When they just happen to have the specific pizza that you ordered sitting on the side after someone cancelled last-minute, so it arrives within ten minutes with the cheese all congealed? That’s the speed that my first bowl of truffle pasta arrived in.

The margherita pizza we also ordered was nowhere to be seen, but we did nearly get some steak instead. The waiters at Pink Mamma seemed to be playing pot luck at the pass, picking up a dish and simply guessing which table it belonged at, because after two more false starts we enquired, gently, as to the location of our elusive margherita.

Out it came another ten minutes later, cradled by a sullen waiter who immediately redeemed himself by producing another bowl of pasta, free. I nearly rejected it. If it wasn’t been free I certainly would have. It was wonderful, believe me; the sauce was rich, the pasta just right, the truffle straight out of the ground, but the first bowl was barely at my stomach. By the time we left, at least one and a half bowls of pasta were making their way through my insides, and I wanted to sleep for a week.

---

We didn’t plan it this way, but the next activity on our list was the activity most likely to make our stomachs turn. Deyrolle was our destination, a shop and cabinet of curiosities that isn’t the place to take your vegan friends.

Go inside and climb the stairs and you’re greeted by the best zoo you’ve ever seen. Lions are stood next to bears and zebras. There’s a penguin perched on the side. Watch out for the butterflies, there’s dozens. Oh look, there’s a cute little chick on the shelf! That hyena is laughing at everyone in the room. The only problem, if you’re particularly fond of animals: they’re dead.

Deyrolle is a reputable business, I hasten to add, this isn’t just some guy’s attic. It started out as an institution for natural sciences, but now it’s a shop and museum rolled into one. That’s right: these things are for sale. Do I need a zebra in the corner of my living room? Absolutely not. Do I think a zebra would really tie the rest of the décor together? You know the answer.

I didn’t buy anything, at least nothing that used to be alive. As much as I stared at a stuffed chick for 100 euro thinking, “well that’s not a bad price at all,” I’m about to move house, and nothing says ‘this man is going to kill me’ like turning up in your new house-share with an assortment of stuffed former pets.

---

We’re staying in Montmartre, my favourite part of Paris, though we realised we knew next-to-nothing about it. So we gave into the tourism websites and booked ourselves a walking tour.

Walking tours are the one tourist-style activity that I without question absolutely love. The history student within me comes out full force, I’m the perfect audience. I nod and smile and laugh in all the right places. If you want to find my nose on one of those tours, start by looking approximately halfway up the tour guide’s arsehole and you’ll be getting close.

The guide could say, ‘Tom, this is where, four hundred years ago, your ancestors were stripped of all their property and made to work the fields on a diet of nothing but bread for the rest of their lives,’ and I would reply, ‘well that’s just fantastically interesting, tell me more.’

This tour didn’t disappoint. The highlight was when we passed where Vincent van Gogh lived during his brief stint in Montmartre, and the guide mentioned there was historical debate about how much of his ear van Gogh cut off. I didn’t even know this particular titbit was up for grabs, but I love a pointless historical question, so if you’ll join me for a moment, I’m going to show you what I found.

vincentvangogh.org, a website clearly not confused about its subject matter, focuses unfortunately on the debate as to whether van Gogh did it, or fellow artist Paul Gauguin did it. I’m not interested as to whether Vincent or Paul did it, I want to know the burning question: just the lobe, or the whole thing?

theartnewspaper.com cuts right to the chase. An article entitled ‘Did van Gogh cut off his whole ear? Or only a part?’, written by Martin Bailey, talks about how until Bernadette Murphy wrote a book called (yes, really) Van Gogh’s Ear, the thinking was it was just a part of the ear he’d lopped off. Bernadette discovered a sketch by a doctor who had treated him who found it was the whole ear.

This is a historical drama that I’m certainly going to be researching, and Bernadette has a new reader. It looks like the historical jury is still out on how much ear old Vincent removed, so I’ll leave the conclusion to the walking tour guide: “any amount of ear cut off is too much ear.”