The City of Flight

In her novel In Transit, Brigid Brophy visualizes the whole modern world as an airport waiting room, calling it, "a droplet of the twentieth century; pure, isolated, rare twentieth century." She must have been thinking of Paris' Orly Airport. When they land at Orly, tourists are only 14 miles from the heart of Paris. But before they depart for the city, they might do well to look around. If they do, they will discover why 3,200,000 people came to Orly last year, a million more than visited the Eiffel Tower--not to fly, but simply to sample the charms of the world's most exotic aerodrome. For Orly is a city in itself, a Gallic city with all the appropriate accouterments.

Orly Birds. Only one couple, Singer Paul Anka and Anne de Zagheb, have been married at Orly (in the airport chapel), but a lot of couples have slept there. The 268-room Orly Hilton and the 56-room Air Hotel are equally popular with the honeymoon crowd and the cinq-`a-sept set who want to avoid being spotted by relatives or friends in downtown hotels de passe. Such liaisons have already become part of the Gallic tradition; in Une Femme Mariee, Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film, one love scene is filmed at an Orly hotel. For newlyweds, the nearby Orly Hilton provides free champagne; for transients, it has a special "day use" rate of $13 per room, as opposed to normal nightly rates of from $19 to $35 (obviously this is convenient not only for philanderers but for travelers who just want a short rest between planes).

Poules de Luxe. Temporary alliances can be formed even on the airport grounds. When Orly first opened for business nine years ago, the filles meeting early morning flights became so brazen in their pursuit of business that airport authorities chased them away. Today the Orly birds are gone and a more discreet corps of poules de luxe (literally, high-price chicks) ply the airport bars on weekends.

Orly houses no fewer than eleven bars --along with six restaurants, one of which, Les Trois Soleils, rates four crossed knives and forks in the Guide Michelin. It serves such haute cuisine delicacies as langouste Thermidor, filets de sole Sainte Marie and bananes flambees an kirsch. The restaurant's cellar, equally impressive, houses a 1929 Chateau Latour ($60 a bottle), a 1949 Chateau Haut Brion ($43), and a goodly supply of 1961 Dom Perignon at $55 per magnum. Les Trois Soleils offers no entertainment, but "dancing weekends" are a regular attraction at Orly's top-floor Brasserie, where "Les 5 G-Men" pound a beat of which J. Edgar Hoover would hardly approve.

Notre Dame. The usual airport amusement of watching planes land and take off is a pallid pastime at Orly. There is a game room equipped with five bowling alleys, a pool table, pinball machines, and two dozen miniature athletic games. There is also a cinema, which offers patrons first-run movies at about half the cost charged by downtown Paris theaters; as an extra service, anyone can check in with a hostess upon entering the cinema and she will call him out when the aircraft arrives. Added attractions include an art gallery, a supermarket, a photo shop that makes instant poster-size enlargements, two hairdressing salons, three post offices, two music stores, a bank, an antique shop and a cheese market. There is also an all-purpose Mr. Fixit shop in which customers can have new heels put on their shoes, keys copied or initials engraved on jewelry. For $1, weary travelers can get a shower in a fully equipped bathroom presided over by a woman attendant whom French Poet Jacques Prevert has nicknamed "Notre Dame des Lavabos"--Our Lady of the Washbasins.

In short, Orly comes close to the unlikely proposition that airports can be fun--a fact of which chauvinistic Frenchmen are justly proud. They are somewhat less proud, of course, of the fact that Orly is also a happy hunting ground for hundreds of pickpockets, who have stolen an estimated $200,000 from the pockets of travelers and tourists within the past five months.

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