PARIS — There’s little doubt about it: An open bottle of Coca-Cola — mon Dieu! — made an appearance on the Obamas’ bistro dinner table in Paris over the weekend.
“That you must not do,” laughed Jean Louis Ferrein, 49, a human-resources consultant, as he shepherded his young son through Paris’ Pompidou Center on Sunday morning. “It destroys the flavor of the food.”
But the U.S. first family’s inaugural weekend overseas otherwise hit all the right notes.
In a nation where private life is cherished as genuinely private and French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s high-profile marriage to model and singer Carla Bruni provides more than enough gossip fodder for the local media, the Obamas have been warmly received as sensible family people.
“They seem to be authentic people, and that’s appreciated,” said Camille Muyronnin, 26, a coffee-counter attendant near the Pompidou Center, a modern arts center that the Obama family toured Sunday morning.
The president, spotted waving from one of the center’s distinctive glass-enclosed escalators that run alongside the outside of the building, later flew back to Washington, leaving his wife and daughters to have lunch with the Sarkozys at the Elysee Palace and then continue exploring Paris on their own.
The family’s sightseeing Sunday was private. But small crowds — mainly surprised passers-by — gathered at each stop to cheer the visiting Americans as a light rain fell across the city.
When Michelle Obama ducked out of a children’s clothing store on the West Bank with a gift-wrapped parcel and a smile Sunday afternoon, crowds attracted by the flashing lights of her security detail’s cars applauded and chanted her name. Obama, accompanied by her daughters, waved back at them.
“She’s so elegant and beautiful!” gushed Margarida de Graca, 60, a housekeeper, as the first lady’s car sped away from the luxury shopping street.
For the most part, however, the Obamas managed to keep what they hoped would be an understated visit just that.
While Obama’s participation in 65th-anniversary D-Day celebrations in Normandy was front-page news Sunday, Le Journal du Dimanche, one of France’s leading papers, detailed Obama daughters Malia and Sasha’s sightseeing in Paris only in a brief article at the bottom of Page 8 and did not dissect Michelle Obama’s wardrobe choices.
Le Parisien even went as far as to defend the American president’s choice in dinner drinks, noting that while a Coca-Cola did grace his dinner table Saturday night, Obama didn’t touch it, opting instead for water with his leg of lamb.
Few American presidential families have been welcomed as eagerly in France as the Obamas, at least since Jacqueline Kennedy — a Francophile who spoke fluent French — swept through Paris with her family in 1961, charming even President Charles de Gaulle, who complimented her command of French history.
