Rue de Paris

You can easily find millions of articles about the most beautiful city in the world {Paris} and you also might have read few of those. This is not another one of those posts describing the beauty or vibrance or attractions or fashion or getting around the city or in fact, nothing really French! This is about a pleasant experience we had at the city of lights.

One important thing we missed in Norway after moving from Singapore was a good south Indian restaurant. Singapore offered plenty of options, like Komalas, Komala Vilas, Ananda Bhavan, Saravana bhavan, Anjappar, Sankranti and many more. We used to be at one of these outlets every week (most probably, more than once).

It had been few months since we moved to Norway and never been to any such restaurants. After a certain point, your brain (or heart) stops craving for something that it knows doesn’t exist or is not available. That was the case with our desire for eating a good south Indian lunch or Ghee Roast or Mini sambar idli or Pongal vada or Oothappam. We reserved those desires for our next holiday trip to India. Btw, my wife does cook good homely south Indian dishes regularly.

We travelled to Paris during the 2018 Autumn school holidays. To save some local commuting, we had booked our stay in the 1st arrondissement, at Novotel Paris Les Halles. Several major attractions were at easy walking distance from the hotel. We spent three days in Paris with typical activities- visits to Louvre museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, Siene river cruise, good long walks through the rues of Paris and definitely some shopping. We also managed to get a late night summit access at Eiffel tower and ended the trip with a day and night spent at Disneyland.

Resting in the hotel room after a tiring day, we were exploring options for dinner. We wanted to try our luck and asked Google to show us Indian restaurants nearby. Tadaaaaa… there comes a list of Indian restaurants. That was no big surprise, but, what was interesting on the list was “Sangeetha Restaurant” which was 2.5 kms away from Les Halles. Could this be an outlet of THE Adyar Sangeetha? Will we find good south Indian food on the menu? The craving that was suppressed for months was suddenly turned ON by brain, heart or whatever. With no further delays, I decided to take the RER (train) to Gare du Nord and find Sangeetha restaurant as directed by Google Maps. I have been to Paris once earlier (in 2007) and so, remembered how the train ticketing and travel worked. The entrance to Les Halles train station was right outside the Novotel.

When traveling to new places, there is one trick that I always follow and I think it is worth sharing here. If I’m in an unfamiliar location, and, if I sense that place to be somewhere I can end up in trouble (like under ground walk ways, isolated streets, lonely railway platforms), I try to ‘act as a local’ who is very familiar with that place. I would not do things that a stranger or tourist would typically do, like: seem to be lost; try to find signboards or directions holding a map, look confused, worried or scared. These are easy and obvious signs to the wrong people waiting for an opportunity. What I do is quite simple: try to find the fastest way out of that place. It might be a completely wrong way I’m taking, but, I would still walk with high level of confidence, as if I have walked there several hundred times. After getting to a ‘safer’ place, I will try to find the right way. This, not necessarily works every time but helps most times! This tip can be useful in cities like Paris, especially the less crowded streets at night.

After walking through a rather confusing train station and approaching couple of wrong railway platforms, I got into the correct train (RER B) heading towards CDG Airport. Gare du Nord was the first stop and my excitement made the 9 minutes train journey seem faster. I quickly got off the train and found my way out of the train station. I had never been there before, but, I could feel some sort of power guiding me. I didn’t feel or get lost in that big train station. After stepping out, I walked few meters from the train station and reached a small junction. There I found a sign board “Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis” on a wall and realised that I was at the right place. That street suddenly reminded me of a wider version of Syed Alwi road (in Singapore) – a street lined with Indian restaurants on one side and Mustafa on the other side (instead, here it was the train station).

There I found, yes, SARAVANA BHAVAN!!! I hadn’t felt the same height of happiness when I was standing in front of Mona Lisa @ Louvre or at the summit of the Eiffel Tower. I’m not good enough with words to express what I felt then.

The guys at the restaurant might have thought I had been left starving for months without food. That’s how I behaved there. I suddenly became the most important customer that evening (this is what I ended up ordering that night). We were there again next day, for lunch and for dinner. We fell completely refreshed and recharged after every meal.

Our trip to Paris would have been incomplete if we had missed this! We have officially added one more place to our ‘must-go’ recommendation list in Paris.

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”

George Bernard Shaw