![]() ![]() ![]() On this day, fog and drizzle prevented us from seeing more than an outline of that venerable monument or anything else. Michelin had made his notes on a clear day. The 1952 Michelin indicated that it overlooked the Arc de Triomphe. ![]() My husband had selected the one-star Napoleon Bonaparte, partly for its price, 3500 francs (about $10) for a double room, and partly for its view. We drove through grim streets, rundown houses on either side, to our hotel, a turn-of-the-century hostelry with a shabby lobby and a cage elevator. Expecting beauty and light in a city with echoes of Victor Hugo, Degas and Maurice Chevalier, we got somber darkness and bone chilling weather. Twenty-four years old at the time, married almost a year, I arrived in the city of my dreams ready to be seduced by her warmth and historic charm. My husband had been recalled for the Korean War and sent to France as part of a bomber wing Eisenhower promised NATO in the early days of the Cold War. Photo above: Lyla Blake Ward in France, 1952. Featuring a 1950 Pontiac, Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf, La Tour d’Argent, Lasserre… and an endless drizzle. Lyla Blake Ward revisits her first trip to the City of Light. Paris was still coated in post-war grime. ![]()
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