J’ai deux amours…..Mon pays et Paris. (Josephine Baker)

20 Things I do in Paris:

“In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language”.

(Mark Twain)





Eurostar arrival Gare du Nord

 

1.Travelling to Paris



John Betjeman at St Pancras Station





The only civilised way to travel to Paris these days is by Eurostar from St Pancras Station, London straight to the Gare du Nord. Instead of trekking out to Heathrow or Gatwick or London City (where there is no BA / Qantas lounge!) two hours before and sitting on plastic seats with screaming children and smelly backpackers... you trundle out to central London St Pancras Station, admire the post-modern take on Victorian railway architecture on steroids and soon you are sipping Ruinart bubbly out of Riedel glasses and nibbling on perfect poached eggs for only 45 minutes... (Not to mention no worries about the restrictions of carry-on luggage when Madame buys 14 pairs of shoes.)

Recommend starting off the trip in very festive fashion with breakfast in the Champagne Bar upstairs and admire the John Betjeman statue. Even if you're on expenses (yes, I do buy wholesale books in Paris) and you are travelling First Class, it's a good idea to be near the front of the pre-boarding queue, as there is only limited space for suitcases between the carriages. The overhead shelves are quite generous but too narrow and too high to pop your suitcase up there.

   If you are lashing out on a premium ticket (and if you buy them well ahead they are almost affordable), you'll get an enjoyable lunch with unlimited petit bottles of vin while gazing at the really dreary NW France flat countryside mercifully flashing past at 200 km per hour.

   Arriving at Gare du Nord is a piece of cake. Head straight for the taxi queue - which sometimes looks daunting, but moves quickly. No need to tip anyone looking after the queue, especially not the vagrants who offer to lift your luggage into the taxi. You're smack bang in the middle of Paris (rather than a camel ride from Charles de Gaulle airport) and your Parisian taxi driver will happily show off his stock car racing skills en route to the Rive Gauche hotel... 

2. Stay at Hotel Notre Dame

Have always stayed  here since my cousins Jackie & Angela recommended it while I was still young... Even the loo has a view of Notre Dame Cathedral across le Petit Pont right outside the front door. As Elizabeth once said, "You can tick off the number 1 on your tourist list before you've even brushed your teeth", let alone had your breakfast croissant dipped in chocolat chaud in the first floor foyer or across the road with the tourist horde. Apparently, the hotel has been refurbished chapeau to toe in Christian Lacroix designer style (floor to ceiling image wallpaper on what used to be charming crumbling plaster and dark beam walls, etc). I daresay the rates have gone up to match. Small rooms: Ask for the ones on the corner overlooking Notre Dame, but at least second floor to avoid the traffic noise. It has one of those tiny Parisian lifts of which it is said that if you share it with an attractive stranger you will be engaged by the time you reach the third floor.
UPDATE: Pictures of the Christian Lacroix interior revamp and NO the prices have not increased! 

3. Buy Books 

Gibert Jeune has wonderful multi-storey bookshops around Boulevard St Michel. They stock new books, university texts for the nearby Sorbonne, remainders and secondhand books (Livres d'Occasion). I brush up my three day stubble and wear my totally illegitimate Cambridge Half Blue scarf wrapped nonchalantly around my shoulders to blend while I browse in the Left Bank retail shops. For my serious professional buying I deal with their no nonsense Wholesale Department (on the Right Bank), run by a most elegant and charmant boulevardier who convincingly pretends not to speak a word of English.

4. Inhale 'Shakespeare & Co.'

167 steps along the banks of the Seine from the hotel's front door is one of the most famous bookshops in the world.

Established in 1919 by Sylvia Beach and still has the aura of Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce in the very dust on its shelves. George Whitman and now his daughter Sylvia have run it since 1951.The yuppie Americans working the front counter are irritating, but the atmosphere makes my bookseller's heart skip a syncopated beat. Not actually a great bookshop, but one without my Paris trip is not complete. If only Australian Health & Safety and Fire laws would allow us to put in wobbly staircases and dead-end corridors with no space to turn around, we could make Elizabeth's Bookshops almost as quaint and interesting!

5. Lunch at Musee d'Orsay

Along the Left Bank of the Seine (opposite the Louvre) is the converted railway station that is now the very stylish Musee d'Orsay.

The former First Class waiting room has been transformed into the museum cafetaria / restaurant, where you can get a very affordable Plat du Jour and a house wine while sitting underneath a breathtaking roccoco ceiling of gilded cherubs and massive chandeliers.

The permanent and temporary exhibitions are fascinating and the size of the place is managable for travellers with limited attention spans.

6. Musee de l'Armee: the Napoleonic exhibitions

I have been a Napoleon addict since my first visit to the Hotel des Invalides in 1975. (Elizabeth stayed in the car and just about froze to death.) Things have changed in the galleries: The Napoleon salle was closed for several years (apparently reopened in March this year), the wonderful relief battle dioramas have disappeared (with all their thousands of tiny model soldiers), but it is still high on the list of every Bonaparte fan in the world. See the stool on which he sat his painful fat bottom at Waterloo... See the stuffed remains of his favourite charger... Admire the splendid uniforms of the Old Guard... Vive l'Empereur!
There are several other galleries in the museum, including an exhibition that shows that it was really de Gaulle and the French that won World War II. Virtually on their own. Allons enfants and all that. Note: Nearest parking is a bit of a walk; there are a couple of semi-decent places to lunch in what is a fairly dreary neighbourhood. Cab rank: Out the Napoleon's Tomb entrance, turn left, walk about 150 metres.

7. Degustation



Brasserie Bofinger, 3 Rue de la Bastille



If you're a browser of foodie websites, you will already know that we poor occasional tourist visitors to Paris haven't got a hope in Hades of gourmanding in the places where serious gourmets discuss Michelin stars the way you and I might chat about Ricky Ponting...

We accept the fact that waiters snigger behind our backs and swap Rhone for Chablis just to watch our faces, but hey, we may have just lost the Ashes (again) but not our sense of humour and the Aussie dollar is kicking arse with the Euro First XI.

So my little selection of (mostly Left Bank) restaurants in Paris is not likely to make it into Gourmet Traveller, and they are heavily weighted towards crawling distance from the hotel, but it works for me:

Brasserie Bofinger (3 rue de la Bastille 75004 Paris , actually just off the Place de la Bastille. Right Bank, but only 20 minutes walk from Notre Dame) Great atmosphere, Art Deco. Perfect introduction to the iconic brasseries of Paris. Staff are very welcoming and helpful with our broken francais. My favourite: the snails (even if they occasionally jump three tables when you try to grasp them with the snail implement). Definitely book ahead and don't accept the upstairs room: You want to be in the ground floor room on the left at the back with banquette seating and the domed ceiling.

Ribouldingue (10 rue St-Julien le Pauvre. 2 minutes from Hotel Notre Dame past Shakespeare & Co in the next little square.) Specializes in amazing offal (which, I know, isn't to everyone's taste). Michelin Guide likes it and they only seem to have about 10 tables, so pop in book a table during the afternoon for an evening meal.

Allard (41 rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, St Germain des Pres) Great atmosphere, lovely atmosphere. On your way home you can grab a crepe with Nutella.

Le Reminet ( 3 rue des Grands Degres) Forget this one. Changed owners. Zagat crucified it.

Guy Savoy (Right Bank: 18, rue Troyon, Batignolles-Monceau) 3 Michelin stars says it all. Special lunch menu available. Suggest you book online and well ahead. Do you know a black American Express card looks really funny when it's melted?

Les Bouquinistes (Left Bank, Saint Michel / St Germain: 53 Quai des grands Augustins) One of Guy Savoy's restaurants, but a lot cheaper than the flagship establishment. On a small side street just off the seine. Snooty "too cool for school" staff, but delicious and elegant food. 30 euro lunch menu.

Relais Louis XIII (Left Bank, St Germain: 8 rue des Grands Augustins) 2 Michelin stars, excellent set lunch menu. Amazing foie gras.

Jacques Cagna (Left Bank, Saint Michel / St Germain: 14 rue Grands Augustine) 1 Michelin star, cheaper than Relais Louis, great frog's legs.

And a few others: La Rotisserie d'en Face (another Jacques Cagna project nearby at 2 rue Christine); Le Timbre ( 3 rue Sainte-Beuve) really tiny place, so you need luck to get in to taste British chef's slant on french food); Helene Darroze - La Salle a Manger (4 rue d'Assas) Unusually for France, a celebrity lady chef...

Place des Vosges

8. Go gay. Go to Le Marais

17th century Paris (originally built on a swamp), with narrow streets, the breathtakingly beautiful Place des Vosges, funky boutiques along Rue des Francs Bourgeois, really cool bars and

more beautiful men than Oxford Street, Sydney.

From the hotel, cross the bridges over the Seine and walk directly north.

As the blokes start looking better than the women (quite an achievement in Paris), you know you are approaching one of the Gay centres of the universe.

In the adjacent, more downmarket, more student / affordable but also and more downright nastily tourissimo Beaubourg area, there is the Pompidou Centre with visual arts display etc inside a glass and steel structure that looks like its wearing its underpants and intestines on the outside of its trousers. (No, I don't like the Lloyds building in London either). I am told that it is cutting edge and the hottest thing in modern art. Hmm, give me the Place des Vosges anytime.

There are some great little short-let bedsitter apartments available in the area as well as pretty and gay-friendly (OK: gay / lesbian / transexual - friendly) hotels, but these are not generally all that cheap compared to the Left Bank.

9. Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, Musee de l'Orangerie

10. Notre Dame cathedral and Ile St Louis

11. Batobus to the Eiffel Tower

12. Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur

13. Shopping at Galeries Lafayette, the Left and Right Banks


14. Champs Elysees and l'Arc de Triomphe

TO BE CONTINUED....