You should try to see a game at Boston’s Fenway Park. It’s no more charming than Wrigley Field, but the team is better, and the ownership has been a model of worthy community involvement.
Paris
Bulot are small, gray, faintly slimy sea snails that often cling humbly to the edge of giant shellfish platters in fancy Paris restaurants. Sweep away the lobster and oysters, and go for the bulot. They feed on crabs and shrimp, and are flavorful, rich, and delicious. We like Bar a Huitres on St. Germain, but they have a few locations. Also, some of the local markets boil the bulot (said to be famously and obnoxiously fragrant as they boil) with black pepper, which is even more amazingly delicious.
If you think you don’t, and never could, like steak tartare, order it at Brasserie Balzar. Put a dollop on a chunk of rye bread, and you will push away the frites.
The park at the Luxembourg Gardens is filled with splendid places for children to romp, and things for them to stomp on. They serve outstanding coffee and pastry, too.
My wife tells me that Paris is also filled with many outstanding cultural attractions. I’ll have to take her word for that.
Also, the wonderful Steven Barclay’s suggestions.
London
Our friend Will Grozier is the best-read man we know, and the most engaging conversationalist. Email him before you land inLondon to have him meet you at the airport. By the time you arrive in town, you will be better-informed than if you had read all of London’s fat Sunday newspapers.
Anything put on at Sam Mendes’ Donmar Warehouse is worth seeing. When you have, go across the street to Belgo’s and have the best of both worlds—London theater and Belgian mussels and frites.
Veeraswamy is London’s oldest Indian restaurant (1926), and possibly the oldest continuing Indian restaurant in the world. Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin had lunch here; Chaplin admired Gandhi, and the Mahatma wondered why he was having lunch with a man who made faces for a living. The menu changes constantly, rotating through all regions, and you’ll be glad India has so many regions.
Simon Parker Bowles keeps a teddy bear—Teddy Parker Bowles—at Green’srestaurant, a theater hangout on St. James. The teddy bear recommends the scotch salmon. So smooth you’ll pick up the lemon wedge with disdain and ask, “What the hell is this for?”