Hôtel National des Arts & Métiers

On some trips, you know your hotel is just going to be a crash pad; a place to bed down while the real adventure happens out in the wilds of the city. The kind of trip you take in your 20s maybe. And then there are other trips, when the hotel matters. Like, say, the first time you and Mrs Smith have been away without the children for three long years. A bolthole won’t do. You want it all. Comfort. Glamour. Romance. Probably Paris as a backdrop. Certainly a late-serving breakfast. Ideally, really, the Hotel National des Arts et Metiers. 

We arrive from Gare du Nord after a blissful journey, which involved no raisins jammed up noses, no fights over felt tip pens, no ill-timed expulsions of bodily fluids. But we’re still yet to slip into holiday mode. 

‘Any word from your mum?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ 
‘Is it even time for her to pick them up from school yet?’
‘No.’

Then we round the corner and there it is, the Arts et Metiers, and instantly we know that everything is going to be alright. Sometimes the simple use of a font lets you know that you’re in safe hands and the sign above the door – upper case, san serif, elegantly evocative of a stupendously expensive perfumery – is an iron-clad indication of good things to come. 
We saunter under into the welcoming arms of Rodrigo on reception and any last doubts dissipate. 

The lobby has low sofas where guests idle over magazines. A small shop sells tasteful, reassuringly expensive things. Rodrigo beguiles us, books us in, and books us tables. And then up we fly to our sixth-floor studio room. 

Roomy by Parisian standards, the light-filled studio makes best use of its space and location. Out our window we can see the mediaeval priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs latterly converted into the Metiers Art Museum. Inside the look is polished industrial. Cement walls. Black ceramics. Modern furniture. Framed prints sit on a custom shelf. It’s super-smart but extremely liveable. 

As is the whole hotel. In the basement there are treatment rooms, a gallery and a fitness space. In the summer, they open up the rooftop sun-trap of a terrace. It’s just all very comfortable and you find yourself thinking you could very happily pootle about the place all day. 

Of course we don’t because we’re in Paris without the kids (did I mention that already?) and we need to make use of every minute. 

We fly to the Musée Rodin and marvel at temporary show of his stupendous (and often pretty sexy) cut outs. We stroll arm-in-arm through the garden and then amble through pretty-pretty St Germain, stopping for a street-side carafe before the siren call of the hotel bar lures us home. 

The Herbarium is tucked away at the back of building and has become a go-to stop for in-the-know locals. We sit at the bar next to a ludicrously chic French couple in their late 50s of the kind that really, even if you were to search the whole world over, you would only find in two or three arrondissements of this fair city. In front of us, on the bar, are samples of the innovative perfume-inspired cocktails kept cheekily in diffusers so you can then spray on to testing strips and sniff them as you might in the fragrance department of Liberty. We choose a Negroni-like Enfleurage de Florence, which is light and delicate and utterly lovely. 

Our glasses drained, we float through to the Ristorante National Cucina Italiana with its velvet banquettes and industrial finishes. Our seat is up at the bar allowing us to keep a beadyish (post-cocktail) eye on chef Julien Cohen and his team and they turn out plate after plate of hearty but pretty Italian delights. We split an Italian-style parmesan soufflé with black truffle, and creamy polenta with sautéed mushrooms which we wash down with a very interesting natural wine from the Jura. After that comes linguine cacio e pepe for me and a perfect piece of sea bass for Mrs Smith. No one screams at me for not letting them watch Peppa Pig on my iPhone and the evening passes in a gorgeous boozy, creamy, cheesy haze. 

We wake the next morning and linger over breakfast. The paper is read. Coffees are sipped. Feather-light pastries are consumed with gay abandon. Mrs Smith raises an eyebrow at my plate as I return from the buffet bar with a madeleine and two financiers. 

I roll from the restaurant out the double doors to discover Paris is crowned with a perfect blue sky. We decide against our original plan to explore the Centre Pompidou (a five-minute stroll from the hotel) and instead decide to amble along the Seine to the Jardin des Tuileries where we eat chestnuts and lounge in deck chairs, scarcely able to believe our luck. 

We lunch in Montmartre and then spend the afternoon exploring the Musée Gustave Moreau. Formerly the house of the French symbolist painter it became a museum when he died at the end of the 19th century and is Paris’s answer the John Soane’s Museum. 

That night we head over to the 11th to super-cute La Buvette where we chug natural wines until we find ourselves drawn back to the hotel for a light meal in the relaxed café-like part of the restaurant and another night of gorgeous sleep in our sixth-floor idyll, the pitter patter of tiny feet blissfully absent.