Hotel Ritz, Paris
It was at the bar at the Hotel Ritz that Mother conducted the “business” that brought our ex-stepfather back into our lives for a time while we were living in London. I don’t know if it was the Ritz Bar, the Bar Vendome or the Bar Hemingway over Rainbows (a signature cocktail) Blood Marys (said to be invented here for Hemingway) or Champagne (although my step-father did favor a Gibson) but whatever they drank in whichever bar overlooking the Place Vendome, it was a success and she brought our now fairy ex-stepfather back to the Hotel Sydney Opera to take us away to the Inter-Continental.
The Ritz was a favorite hotel of Oliver’s and run at this time by Charles Ritz the son of the hotel’s founder Cesar Ritz, the legendary Swiss hotelier whose name is still synonymous with glamour and luxury almost a hundred years after his death.
