Dressing for Europe

Nestled in some twisty streets beside the Louvre, Les Caves du Louvre contains wine cellars that once connected to the Louvre. When Paris built its metro, it claimed large swaths of these cellars for tunnels and stations, divorcing a few sections from the palace. Les Caves du Louvre bought the separated property in 2015 and set up shop. The cellars’ history grants them rights to the name. In addition to storing and selling wine, Les Caves du Louvre offers wine tastings and tours through its cellars.

We scheduled a tour the afternoon after our Louvre visit. Eight other people joined us: a delightful couple from the Phillipines, four twenty-somethings from France, and a middle-aged couple, also from France. This last couple was quintessentially French: willowy and smartly dressed. He’d knotted his scarf just so. She wore a trendy coat and stylish boots. They carried themselves with the confidence of beautiful people who were winning at life. After checking in with the host, the man actually turned and clicked his heels. I was going to drink wine with these people? Swirl a glass, smell a nose, watch for legs? I felt badly outclassed.

Let’s diverge for a moment and discuss wardrobe. Our marriage passed the “are you wearing that?” threshold years ago. My wife now shakes her head only at my most egregious wardrobe pairings. She’s used to my awkward attire. Give me jeans and a tee and I’m happy. I knew I’d established my look when one of my children said, “Dad, why are you so dressed up today?” I looked down. I was wearing jeans and a polo.

The guidebooks challenged my thinking. Europe dresses differently, they said. No jeans. No t-shirts. No logos. Definitely no baseball caps. Collared shirts, scarves, slacks, dress pants. I purchased a new wardrobe for our trip. Woot! had a deal on logo-less, solid-colored polos in conservative tones. Pants are always a challenge — my inseam is 31", and pants come in 30" and 32", but rarely 31". I have to choose between flood and drought. Besides, the waist size seems a rebuke for my diet and lifestyle. A handful of trips to malls and clothing stores, coupled with fortitude, perseverance, and humility, netted me enough solid-colored chinos to mix and match with the shirts. My wife bought me a couple scarves, which seemed a little too dandy for me, but I packed them anyway. I already had a suede flat cap my father-in-law gave me for Christmas one year. I was ready to dress appropriately.

Imagine my dismay, as we queued for the Louvre, to see a man wearing gym shorts and flip-flops. Flip-flops. It’s 42 degrees, and he’s wearing flip-flops. Flashing his hairy toes and jagged nails as if he were kicking sand at a public beach. The coup de grace, however, was his baseball cap. Backwards. Boston Red Sox. Faded and tattered. It must have been his lucky hat from his frat boy days. That’s what he wore to see the Mona Lisa.

He wasn’t alone. People all over Europe are wearing jeans, t-shirts, shorts, ballcaps. And not just to museums. Restaurants with tablecloths? Shorts and tees. Jewelry shops where black-clad guards assess your purchasing power before granting entry? Shorts and tees. The Vatican? Shorts and tees. I kid you not. I stood gazing at the finger of God passing life to Adam, while standing beside a man wearing a “Georgia 3X Champions” cap to cover his hat head. People walked the hallowed halls where popes seek inspiration wearing shorts and sandals.We exited the Sistine Chapel to walk through the adjacent church. Like the Sistine Chapel, the church was also a holy place, with rules for no talking and no pictures. I trailed a bubba who wore a softball top, sweat pants, and Velcro Nikes. He had one of those gas station ball caps with the mesh back on his head. He ambled up to a Swiss guard, phone in hand, and asked, “Picture? Picture?” The guard gave a curt shake of the head, clearly irked that he had to acknowledge this buffoon, and sent him on his way. Granted — have you seen how the Swiss guards in the Vatican dress? — asking people not to take pictures is like asking a bee to pass up a row of tulips.

Here’s a picture I took from afar:

Anyway, the guidebooks lie. Wear what you want. The one hard rule? Women must not expose their shoulders in the Vatican. They had signs everywhere to that effect. We can handle knobby knees and naked statues, but a female clavicle goes a step too far. Back to the wine tasting.

You know how you sometimes see giant wine bottles in fancy restaurants? I always thought those were promos left behind by vendors — the restaurant gets a little decor, the vendor gets a little advertising — but I learned they actually put wine in those bottles. They pour from them. The different sizes even have names. I’d heard of “magnum,” but here’s the list:

• Pilette
• Bouteille
• Magnum
• Jeroboam
• Mathusalem
• Salmanazar
• Balthazar
• Nabuchodonosor

Those are the French names, but they seem to match the names of Biblical kings. The next time you go to a fancy restaurant, order a Balthazar of Bourdeaux just to watch how they manage to pour it.

Here’s our tour guide with the lineup:

We tasted three wines: a white and two reds. Here are the bottles we tried:

I would document their respective bouquets and dryness and floral notes for you, but I’m unequal to the task. They all tasted different from each other, and the white was sweeter and the reds were drier. All were good, though none made our, “We’ve got to have this again!” list. Ask the quintessential Frenchman in our group for the tasting notes. He, of course, knew the answers to all the trivia questions our guide lobbed. “Alsace,” he would say, with utter surety. His wife kept leaning into him and whispering things that made them both laugh. We were the audience in the show of their life. Not that they were anything but gracious to the hoi polloi.

We spent the evening in a gay bar, quite by accident but not regrettably. It was a boat anchored on the Seine, and we had bellied up to the bar, about to order, when Laura clocked it. We had arrived just before the rush. As we sat on a bench in the prow of the boat, drinking our beers, we watched the crowds amass. And then we moved on.

The bar from the outside:

The bar from the inside:

The people in the bar were not wearing t-shirts and shorts. I had found the people from the guidebooks.