Three perfect days in Paris 6eme Rive Gauche – day two

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There is only one place to have your first breakfast in Paris – Les Deux Magots. Sitting in the morning sun opposite the oldest church in Paris, L’Eglise St Germain, it is the perfect place to begin a walking romance – and let the day unfold as you float down little tributaries of the 6eme with your lover. My first reveal was with Anais at her atelier Nyamanti, possibly one of the best-kept secrets in Paris.

Tucked away in Rue Cardinale, Anais, who grew up in Zimbabwe relishes her geographical situation. “I would not want to be anywhere else – people who come here are meant to be here!”

Her exquisite works of art are illuminated on pale grey tables, like miniature sculptures. The five collections present the most delicate narrative of hand made jewels that embody the language of intimacy. What I wouldn’t give for a lover to take me here and pick me a jewelled flower.

Designer and goldsmith she does not draw but works with her hands directly with the materials, sculpting and carving beeswax to produce prototypes in the smallest of details, bringing forth the landscape of her imagination. Her workbench, partially revealed behind curtains, gives the showroom an atmosphere that is unlike any other jewellery shop in Paris. “I have so many clients that get in touch with me months after they have bought a piece to tell me that they have fallen in love with it. It does not always work out the way the client imagined, and I often do things up to three or four times before I am happy. There is a just a moment where the client has to trust me,” she tells me.

Today, with bespoke and tailor-made services on the increase, the sophisticated consumer has a certain expectation that they can commission what they want. It is much more frightening to hand over to the designer or creator who interprets what you want but adds something too. It’s like an adventure. “You cannot control life, you might have an idea but rather than be disappointed that it is not what you imagined why not work together – and leave a little bit of space to play inside?”

At this point I realize that Anais’s atelier might just be a one-stop shop to get a couple back on track. Her sense of collaboration is like a template to a successful relationship, one that is allowed to grow and flourish with each person relinquishing enough control to let the magic happen. If you have a prescribed idea of how things should be then the relationship hits a wall. “What happens is that you suffer, inside it is eating you up because you want it to be a certain way, instead of just letting yourself be taken a bit,” she says.

I move over to the one of the tables where a garden of orchids is blooming in silver and gold, with pearls of coral and accents of ruby. A living garden for your lover she can keep forever.

There is nothing more romantic than a spontaneous bouquet of flowers – but it is terrible to have to leave them behind. The galleries and boutiques nestled in the crisscross of streets in St Germain des Pres offer a magical and inimitable array of gifts on this theme, ranging from a garden of orchids at Nyamanti to a bouquet of black peppered roses from Le Labo. If Leonard is still there, you will have a lyrical introduction to their scents that become a part of you, ‘so people won’t say that smells nice what are you wearing but you smell good.’ I put the peppery Rose 31 on my left wrist and their city exclusive, Paris, on my left. The scents are unisex so lovers can share the same scent, which develops differently when alone or together.

Also on Rue Cardinale is the arrondissement’s most exclusive Salon – soon to be replicated in Beijing – brain child of prolific artist and blogger Yin Xin. One epic canvas in a baroque gold frame is propped up on an easel before a large grey curtain that hides the interior. Pulling it back is like stepping through the looking glass into the artist’s head. At first the walls seem to be covered in 19th century portraits, yet on closer inspection they appear to be newly painted with Chinese faces.

Yin Xin is a prolific and talented painter. While his series Once upon a Time in China creates a kind of retrospective of a lost world before the revolution, it is his series Metamorphose that literally illustrates the dichotomy of an artist immigrant. He buys old and damaged 19th century paintings and restores them with a crucial difference: he replaces the European subjects with Chinese.

Born in Kashgar and edutcated in Xian, Yin first started painting Communist propaganda on walls before he and his family were exiled to Mongolia. He came to Paris over 20 years ago, adopting the city as his home. His personal history and his art are so enmeshed in the search for belonging that it is difficult to distinguish the two. On the wall in the corridor of his Salon is a rack of vintage hats, for all the different characters Yin embodies when he goes out. He has a blog on WECHAT which gives the unique perspective of a Chinese artist living in Paris.

“I remember feeling very lonely when I first arrived, and then I had a kind of epiphany. I was in the metro and some students were playing classical music,” he says. “I recognised the music, just as I did the posters of the works of art I had come here to see. I know these artists – they are why I came to Europe – they are my friends I am not alone.“

Having lost sense of time, we emerged into the afternoon light and headed over to the Brasserie Lipp on Boulevard St. Germain. Open all day this Brasserie is like an institution – best known for its pigs trotters and oysters – with neat rows of tables where patrons sit side by side looking out at each other, just in case Alain Delon walks in.

That afternoon we took a leisurely stroll through the area and ended up in Place Furstenburg, joining the queue for the newly opened Chou shop. The window is dressed with a little stack of the two varieties on offer – creme ou chocolat – it is part of the latest craze of mono-boutiques sweeping the capital. Here you forget that two streets away is the busy throng of the Boulevard St Germain, as if we had stepped back in time to when Paris was not really one giant museum. With this in mind we were somehow primed for the bonkers world of Le Prince Jardinier whose HQ is opposite les Chou. It is possibly one of the best surprises I have had in years – and it felt slightly like we had fallen down a rabbit hole.

Its owner, a direct descendent from Madame Germaine de Stael who was famously exiled from Paris, took over the taxidermy emporium Deyrolle and set about procuring a Chateau for hisBar a Tomates that functions dually as a tomato institute and boutique hotel.

Words cannot describe the experience of being in this reimagined emporium of death and life. You have to see it for yourself, and perhaps bring back your own case of butterflies. The night ended with dinner and jazz at L’Hotel, another great place to base yourself from on the left bank.