Paris: In Three Days?

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Friends of a friend is going to Paris for a few days - lucky them! Here are a few suggestions I gave them last week:
  • Start from Arc de Triomphe on Champs Elysée and walk straight towards the Louvre museum.
  • There’s another museum next to it on rue Rivoli called Les musées des Arts Décoratifs that has design and fashion exhibitions that are less crowded.
  • Also on rue Rivoli is Angelina’s, a very popular café with the best hot chocolates and desserts. Have lunch at St. André des Arts, it’s a street with lots of restaurants.
  • St-Chapelle on Ile de la Cité is amazing, and worth the wait to get in. You can also visit the Notre Dame Cathedral, Shakespeare & Co (a famous bookshop) across the street, and have a wander around the Latin Quarter. Another great church is the Sacré Coeur in Montmartre.
  • Have a picnic dinner on Friday nights on Pont des Arts with the Parisians! Rue Mouffetard on the 5th arrondissement also has many bars and lots of Parisian students and tourists come here in the evenings.
  • Still in the 5th arrondissement, you can enjoy mint tea and Arabic desserts at the Mosquée de Paris on 39, rue Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire. This is the place shown on the movie, Je t’aime Paris. On Saturday mornings visit the Bastille Market (Bastille metro station). It’s one of the biggest markets in Europe, selling fruit and vegetables, bread, flowers, clothes, etc.
  • If you want crêpes from the streets, make sure they are 3 euros or less. If there are more than 3 euros, they are too expensive. One good crêpe restaurant is L'Ebouillanté, on 6 rue des Barres. It’s in the 4th district, which is also le Marais and is the Gay district. It’s teeming with hipsters. There are lots of interesting shops here, especially op shops for second hand clothes.
  • Best falafels can be found L’As du Fallafel on rue des Rosiers, which is the Jewish part of le Marais. There’s always a queue but it’s not that expensive.
  • The two most well-known macarons shops are Ladurée and Pierre Hermé. Ladurée is more girly and has more traditional flavours. I like their smaller shop on rue Napoléon, which is less crowded than their Champs Elysée shop. Pierre Hermé is more modern and has experimental flavours. They are around the same price wise.
  • After notes: Rue du Cherche-Midi also has many restaurants for lunch (the street name literally means ‘find-noon’, because it’s where the Parisians can be found at noon). Musée Rodin has a garden at the back with lounge chairs that not a lot of people know about. It’s a great museum, as well.

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2 comments

  1. Visiting markets like the Mouff is the best way not only to get picnic ingredients but to see how locals shop. Its one of the great things of Paris that the small shops are in no danger of dying out and there are still great local varieties to be had everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly! People watching is definitely part of visiting local markets, as well as being able to shop in season products :)

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