Danielle Steel - Hotel Vendome

The first stop on her list was the Hotel Ritz in the Place Vendome. She had been warned not to wear blue jeans or they wouldn’t let her in since she wasn’t staying there, so she wore a pair of simple black slacks and a white blouse and put her long red hair in a bun, just as she did at the hotel, which made her look older than she was. And she was in awe of the elegant surroundings the moment she walked through the door: the long mirrored halls, the wood paneling. The chasseurs were her own age and wore almost the identical uniform to the bellmen at their hotel. She walked all through the lobby and looked into the elegant bar. Every inch of the hotel was beautiful, from the flowers to the chandeliers, and she could see why it had inspired her father to set up his own hotel in a similar style.

Using a map of the city, she went to the Crillon after that, which was another of the old elegant hotels, this one on the Place de la Concorde. She read in a guidebook she had bought that the guillotine had been located outside the hotel years before. The Crillon was beautiful as well. And from there she went to the Meurice on the rue Royale. It had been German headquarters during the Second World War and was another of the city’s grand hotels.

She saved the Plaza Athenee and the George V, which was now a Four Seasons, until the next day and was equally impressed by them, for their elegance and beauty. But the hotel that had snagged her heart was the Ritz, and she went back to it again and again. She had tea in the garden, and brunch on Sunday morning in the Salon Cesar, to see if she could borrow any ideas for the Vendome.

And she took photographs of the flowers at the George V with her cell phone, so she could show them to Jan at home. The American designer Jeff Leatham had created a whole new style of flower arranging that was different from anything she had ever seen, with long stems sticking at odd angles out of tall transparent vases, creating a whole installation like a work of art. She wanted to try and imitate that for their lobby. For the first time she felt as though she were in partnership with her father, and was prouder than ever of the gem he had created with the Vendome. Paris was like the mecca of the hotel industry, and she visited several smaller, elegant hotels as well, like the St. James in the sixteenth arrondissement, which combined the elegance of France with the atmosphere of a British men’s club, with ancestral portraits, wood paneling, and deep leather couches in the bar.

She spent a week in Paris discovering every hotel she had ever heard of and even a few tiny ones on the Left Bank. And at night she would go back to the youth hostel and plan what sights she was going to see the next day. She had to switch youth hostels after a few days because she had stayed the limit of days they would allow. And she moved to one nearby, also in the Marais.

She didn’t care about the national monuments nearly as much as she did about visiting the hotels. She took notes on what she saw, and photographs whenever she saw something that she thought they could imitate at home.

When she finally heard from her father, he was upset. He had tried her for several days at the house in St. Tropez where no one answered, and finally Miriam told him that she had gone back to New York more than a week before. And when he tried her on her cell phone, it had taken another two days to reach her. He called their friends in Bordeaux, and their daughter knew she had gone to Paris, because Heloise had called her to say hello and report on her adventures.

“Where are you staying?” he asked, annoyed that she hadn’t checked in. She had gotten much too independent over the summer, and he didn’t like it. But she was on a quest, and her own personal mission, and she didn’t want him to force her to come home, so she had stayed out of touch for as long as she could.

“I’m in Paris, visiting every hotel I’ve ever heard of and staying at a very nice youth hostel in the Marais. Papa, it almost makes me cry every time I see those hotels, they’re so beautiful.” She spoke of them like shrines. “The Ritz is the most beautiful hotel I’ve ever seen, after ours of course.” Although he was troubled by not hearing from her for so long, he laughed at what she said.

“I know all about those hotels. I worked there. Why didn’t you call me when you left your mother in St. Tropez? How bad was it?”

“It wasn’t great,” she said vaguely. He knew it must have been pretty bad if she left.

“I didn’t want you to make me come home,” she said honestly. “I wanted to see Paris anyway, on my own. I’m glad I came.” Things had gotten clearer to her since she’d been there, and she knew what she wanted to do now. She was going to discuss it with him when she got home, but not on the phone.

“Well, I’m telling you to come home now. Get your bottom on a plane. I don’t want you floating around Paris alone. You’ve been there long enough.” But she wanted to stay forever.

“I’m fine, Papa. Can I have a few more days? I don’t want to leave yet.” He grumbled when she said it and finally agreed to let her stay if she checked in with him twice a day. “Okay, I promise.” But her father was secretly impressed that she had managed so well alone. She had definitely grown up.

“And don’t go on the metro late at night. Take a cab. Do you need money?”

“No. I’m doing fine.” It shocked him to realize how self-reliant she had become. She had left her mother’s house, for whatever reason, gotten herself to Paris, and seemed to be having a great time on her own. He couldn’t wait to see her, but he knew that the experience was good for her. She’d had a job in Bordeaux, left St. Tropez, and was doing fine in Paris. It had been an interesting summer for her, and she had loved it. She thanked him profusely for letting her stay. She promised to come home in another week. And the week after that she was starting her senior year at the Lycee. The timing of this trip had been perfect for her, more than he knew.

She returned, as promised, eight days later, after several more visits to the Ritz and a drink on her last night at the Hemingway Bar. She had met up with her school friends once or twice. And several men had tried to pick her up, in bistros and bars, but she had fended for herself. She took a cab back to her youth hostel when she left the Ritz, and early the next morning she flew home. Her trip to Paris had been a total success.

She sat quiet and dreamy all the way back to New York on the flight and went through customs quickly. She had called her father before she left to tell him what flight she was on, and he was waiting for her at the airport, with the hotel driver and the Rolls. She jumped into his arms with an enormous grin, and he held her close, and was so grateful she was home. He had missed her more than he’d admitted to her or anyone else.

“You’d better get into Barnard or NYU,” he warned her on the drive back into the city. “I’m not letting you go away for that long again.” She didn’t answer him for a few minutes and was looking quietly out the window, and then she turned to him with a serious look of determination that he had never seen in her before. She looked into her father’s eyes, and what he saw for the first time was a woman and not a child.

“I’m not going to NYU or Barnard, Papa. I’m going to apply to the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne.” She said it in a quiet voice. It was the same school he had gone to, but the last thing he wanted for her now was a career in the hotel industry. She would have to sacrifice too much and have no other life. “I looked them up online, and they have a two-year program that I qualify for, and one of those years is an internship in the industry. I want to run the hotel with you one day, and I have a lot of good ideas we can even try out right now.”