#138
A MAGAZINE FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO TRAVEL SMART
JUNE 2013
FREE TO TAKE HOME
Lick your summer into shape with our family holiday special
easyJet TRAVELLER JUNE 2013
Eat Crete
Living la dolce vita
From cradle to rave
A foodie break even moody teenagers will enjoy
Gorgeous gelato and 22 other reasons kids will love Sicily
The party parents still having it large in Ibiza
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Word from Traveller HQ…
EDITOR’S LETTER
What's exciting us this month
It’s a well-known wn rule that every great family holiday starts stressfully...
C O V E R I L L U S T R AT I O N S T E I N A R L U N D T H I S PA G E T I M E W H I T E , H E L E N C AT H C A R T
Whether it’s Dad’s sheer inability to leave the house in good time for the fl ight or Mum fretting because the children are getting restless in the back of the car, something always happens to ratchet up the tension. It is, of course, worth it for that moment on arrival when you all step into the sun together and the pressures of the journey disappear as quickly as that fi rst ice lolly or gelato. Th is is, you may have guessed, my roundabout way of announcing our family special this month (and getting in a reference to our cover). It takes slightly more than a frozen sweet to please a pair of teens but, fortunately, the Greek isle of Crete was more than up to the challenge when Nicola Venning travelled there with
her sons to sample the country’s gastro revolution (p64). Th is is one of our three big family stories that include a staycation in Jersey for very young ones (p83) and a five-day itinerary in Sicily that combines history with outdoor thrills (p86). At the other end of the spectrum, we’re in Paris this month to sample the nighttime delights of Pigalle. Long regarded the city’s seediest tourist trap, this onetime haunt of Toulouse-Lautrec is again buzzing with creativity and cool bars (p72). Though not quite as hedonistic as in those fin de siècle days, it’s defi nitely not one for the kids. Bon voyage and see you next month.
Simon Kurs, Editor
SALAD DAYS Cold meats, veg boxes, artisan puds… We’ve been gorging on Carluccio’s new deli hamper – perfect for an impromptu picnic.
BODY PUMP We thought we’d seen every flash mob going until we came across the Russian craze for impromptu techno “pump dancing”. Google it.
Blue wonder: one of our families hits the beach in Crete
ON THE FLY While on the Isle of Skye this month, our Dep Ed tried fly fishing. Although nothing was caught, she definitely got the bug.
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Roll up, roll up, one and all, a kingdom of night-time pleasures awaits. A little over a century ago, it was where the rich, the beautiful and the brilliant of Paris congregated, in a riot of creativity and hedonism. Now, the good times are back. Forget the seedy peepshows. When darkness falls, Pigalle is, once again, the place to drink, party and stay out oh lĂ lĂ late WORDS
CLODAGH KINSELLA PHOTOGRAPHY
LAURA STEVENS
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Dalí, Serge Gainsbourg and the Rolling Stones were all regulars, and since it re-opened in 2010, the night owls have been arriving in ever-growing numbers. You could say the glory days have returned to the city’s one-time red light district. Long regarded as a seedy tourist trap, an exciting new wave of bars is tempting modern-day bohemians away from the polished charms of the Marais district. After all, where else is it possible to knock back beers in a former hostess bar, then stumble across the street for all-night dancing in a mansion that once belonged to the composer Georges Bizet? In short, South Pigalle – or SoPi, as it’s been dubbed by in-the-know locals – which sits below Montmartre and the sex shops of the Boulevard de Clichy, has become the coolest place to go out in Paris. “In every era, »
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t’s Saturday night in Paris, and a rock and roll, 20-something crowd are gearing up for another debauched round of Kararocké. Disguised as Alice Cooper, host Nicolas Ullmann knocks back the Jack Daniel’s, while Michel Gondry, esteemed fi lm director and hipster darling, performs an impromptu cameo against a psychedelic backdrop. Later, the bravest souls will take to the stage for a chance to sing for glory with the backing of the real rock band, while the chic, late-night restaurant upstairs fi lls up with skinny-jeaned creatives, who arrive to lounge on retro velvet sofas or tuck into Argentinian steak. Welcome to the Bus Palladium (lebuspalladium.com) in the heart of Pigalle. During its 60s heyday, Salvador
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there has been one particular neighbourhood which the hip crowd tends to fetishise,” explains Franck Knight, nightlife reporter for the Parisian magazine Technikart. “In the 80s, it was central Paris and Les Halles, then it was Bastille and East Paris – Oberkampf, Ménilmontant and Belleville – and these days it’s Pigalle.” A Charles Bukowski-esque figure, Knight (real name Chevalier) has lived in Pigalle for 25 years – the last few of them directly above Le Sans Souci (65 Rue Jean-Baptiste Pigalle). A key venue on the SoPi circuit, it’s a rather unassuming spot, but a line in good, cheap beers has proved a hit with a laid-back international set. Knight fi rst noticed the onset of the Pigalle phenomenon three or four years ago. “That was when venues like Hôtel Amour [hotelamourparis.fr] and Chez
Moune [54 Rue Jean-Baptiste Pigalle; tel: +33 (0)1 4526 6464] opened,” he recalls. “They really started to draw in the crowds, as well as attracting the media.” A former bordello co-owned by graffiti-artist-turned entrepreneur André Saraïva, Hotel Amour is a seriously seductive boutique bolthole, its walls adorned in risqué Terry Richardson shots. The courtyard often overflows with style setters. If their talk turns fl irtatious, a day-rate option on rooms offers a canny wink at the establishment’s racy past. Along with nightlife impresario Lionel Bensemoun, Saraïva runs La Clique, the all-conquering Paris empire which embraces über-hip clubs like Le Baron (6 Avenue Marceau; tel: +33 (0)1 4720 0401). In 2009, the duo opened Chez Moune in a former lesbian cabaret. A
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hotspot for electro parties, the seriously grungy venue has since been joined by a cluster of competitors riffi ng off its energy – including, right opposite, the duo’s very own down-at-heel beer bar Le Lautrec (63 Rue JeanBaptiste Pigalle; tel: +33 (0)1 5692 2879) and a rum dive bar, L’Embuscade (47 Rue de la Rochefoucauld), which they launched in 2012. It’s all happening at breakneck pace now, but the scene’s watershed moment came in 2010 with the opening of a clutch of new ventures. Alongside Le Bus Palladium, a raucous techno haunt called La Loco
reopened as the hip electro and dance club La Machine du Moulin Rouge (lamachinedumoulinrouge.com). The atmospheric Café Carmen (le-carmen.fr), located in a listed 19th-century mansion, introduced wild parties, absinthe cocktails and the hippest DJs into the quarter’s intoxicating mix. “Finally there were some proper, grown-up spaces, which looked great and played quality music,” says Stephan Mallavergne, the music director of new generation Pigalle bar Glass (facebook.com/glassparis). “Le Mansart [1 Rue Mansart; tel: +33 (0)1 4878 2277], »
The courtyard often overflows with style setters. If their talk turns flirtatious, a day-rate option on rooms offers a canny wink at the establishment’s racy past
PARTY TIME
06 01 Revellers don’t mind queuing to get into Bus Palladium 02 Franck Chevalier (aka Franck Knight) in Le Sans Souci 03 Inside Pigalle cocktail bar Dirty Dick 04 Cocktails at L’Embuscade, a Cape Verde-themed bar 05 A Great Gatsby night at La Machine du Moulin Rouge 06 On the dance floor at Bus Palladium
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which offered fans of late-night cocktail haunts a huge terrace right in their neighbourhood, closed the fi le on this second phrase.” Retro, neon-lit den Le Mansart offers superior cocktails, while its short menu is dominated by burgers and hotdogs, chiming with the low-key vibe typical of its neighbours. Glass – part of the most recent wave of openings, which also produced Calamity Joe (facebook.com/ CalamityJoeClub) and the Pigalle Country Club (pigallecountryclub.com) – occupies one of the quarter’s dormant hostess bars. Run by the team behind popular Marais Mexican Le Candelaria (candelariaparis.com), its drinks list features star South American liquors, including Pisco and Mezcal. But if the MO sounds trendy, the place remains distinctly unstuff y. “The clientele of
bars in Pigalle is very varied compared to the Marais,” reflects Mallavergne. “It attracts people who are less concerned with how they look than being authentic. At Glass, we like it when business types loosen their ties and girls dance on the seats.” Back in the 19th century, dancing of a more bacchanalian bent was the order of the day at Pigalle’s most notorious cabaret, topped by a red windmill on the Boulevard de Clichy. “The Moulin Rouge, with its women of the half-world, its giddiness, its glare, its noise, its naughtiness,” exclaimed Édouard Cucuel and William Chambers Morrow in Bohemian Paris of To-Day (1899). “Here at last we should fi nd all absence of restraint, posing, sordidness, self-consciousness, and appeals to abnormal appetites.” Hell-themed establishments like
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The process of gentrification has extended south into Pigalle from Montmartre and Abbesses, attracting bourgeois bohemians the Café de l’Enfer meanwhile, proposed “diabolical spectacles” and “torture of the damned.” Certain Belle Époque icons, such as the music halls Le Trianon and La Cigale are still thriving as popular concert venues, but others remain only in name. In a past life, Place Pigalle was a nexus of malodorous cafés, like the so-called ‘Rat Mort’ and neighbouring venue Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, which was ground zero for impressionists. Here, bohemians like Baudelaire came to escape their demons with the mythic ‘green fairy’ – both the café and spirit were immortalized in Degas’s
painting L’Absinthe – before spurring on their muses with one of the quarter’s myriad loose women. During World War II, both the Nazis – and then Allied soldiers – enjoyed the charms of ‘Pig Alley’, and the sex shops and striptease clubs continued to proliferate. But part of the reason for SoPi’s rise has been the disaffection of this traditional red-light district, with police crackdowns on prostitution and sex shops threatened by online competition. At the same time, the process of gentrification has extended south into Pigalle from Montmartre and Abbesses – with bourgeois »
BELLE ÉPOQUE
12 07 DJ Regis Legendre takes to the decks at Bus Palladium 08 In a 19th century mansion, Le Carmen is one of the city’s hot new venues 09 Outside Dirty Dick 10 The cocktail list at L’Embuscade comes highly recommended 11 At the bar in Le Carmen 12 Taking to the floor at La Machine du Moulin Rouge
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bohemians attracted to key SoPi streets, like the Rue des Martyrs, with its food market and celebrated Rose Bakery (46 Rue des Martyrs). It’s not all chi chi bars and boutiques yet, though. Last year, investigators uncovered a €2.5m embezzlement ring operating out of the gambling house Le Cercle du Jeu on Rue Frochot – a landmark Pigalle street once home to Baudelaire’s mistress. Rather fittingly, the casino was one of the locations featured in the fi lm noir Touchez Pas au Grisbi, about Paris racketeers. There is talk that the impressive building will reopen as a
restaurant this year, but in the meantime, entrepreneurs Olivier and Julie Demarle are set to unveil two new ventures this summer: the restaurant Victor and Le Dépanneur, a legendary Pigalle bar that fi rst opened in the late 80s and was an early adoptee of 50s diner-style architecture. In short, the Paris scene has never been so exciting. Although the opening of the David Lynch-designed Club Silencio (silencio-club.com) in 2011 created waves, the city has historically lacked the cutting-edge cool of London or New York. For Demarle, all that has changed »
Le Dépanneur, a legendary Pigalle bar that opened in the late 80s, was an early adoptee of 50s diner-style architecture
CHEQUERED PAST
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13 At hipster hangout Le Lautrec 14 A good-looking crowd head to Le Sans Souci for casual cocktails 15 Red lights don’t denote what they once did, at La Machine du Moulin Rouge
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“It’s the French equivalent of Shoreditch and Williamsburg. All the creative 30-somethings are moving in, and they’re here to stay” with Pigalle. “It’s the French equivalent of Shoreditch and Williamsburg,” he says. “All the creative 30-somethings are moving in, and they’re here to stay. People love places with a scandalous past: it’s like walking on the previous generation’s hot coals.” Few have been quite so charmed by the area’s piquant past as British decadent Pete Doherty. For the past few months, the adoptive Parisian has played a weekend residency at the bar-tabac Le Fontania (25 Rue Pierre Fontaine; tel: +33 (0)1 4874 2197). “It’s the most unlikely, sketchy place,” muses Knight. “Before, it was frequented
by the working class and the only people you saw came to bet on the horses or watch the football.” It’s precisely these kind of low-rent thrills and insalubrious surroundings that fi rst attracted the original bohemian crowds during the Belle Époque. What they would have made of present day Pigalle –not to mention rock karaoke – is up for debate, but we have been seduced. Clodagh Kinsella is Editor at Large for Gogo City Guides, a Paris-based publisher of new-generation guides, in print and for iPhone, to London and Paris (and soon New York). Find them on Amazon and the App Store. gogocityguides.com
LE COOL 16 Stephan Mallavergne owns Glass bar 17 At Le Carmen 18 Hotel Amour has day as well as night rates
P FHOORT OT &I NCSSE S * R ET EC P R E1 8D9I T H E R E
Paris need to know ( 1889 )
( 940 )
( 28.9 )
Year the Moulin Rouge opened in Pigalle
Number of films shot in the French capital in 2011
Million visitors come to the city annually, making it the most popular in the world
HÔTEL JOSEPHINE Just 200m from the Moulin Rouge, the elegant rooms here have air-con, TV and free Wi-Fi. hotels.easyJet.com
easyJet Holidays Two nights on a B&B basis at the threestar Alane Hotel in Paris, departing from London Luton on 9 July, costs from £149 per person. easyJet.com/holidays*
BOOK NOW We fly to Paris from 19 destinations. See our insider guide on page 148. Book online at easyJet.com
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