Paris tips: visiting

 

Note: this post and the following one, about eating out, were written for American friends visiting Paris, one of them for the first time, who wanted a few tips from a local. They were staying in a hotel just off République...

*****

I guess you'll have your own guide book to help you plan your visit. But whichever one (or more) it is, I thought you might find the Michelin Green Guide's tourist map of Paris (below) helpful, as it makes it easy to locate the main sights. I think you'll find if you click on the map, it will blow up to a more legible size. The inset box at top left explains Michelin's ratings system, similar to its approach to restaurant ratings.

With a decent guide book, you won't need much help from me, but I just wanted to add one or two items that visitors might miss, plus an idea for a north-south walk (or south-north, as you wish) that makes a change from the usual main east-west (or west-east!) drag. Also, finally, one neglected but unique museum, and a few practicalities.

Where young Parisians hang out - and where I shop for the weekend

République is a good place to be. Quite often, American friends choose hotels bang in the centre of Paris - near Opéra, say - and then complain they can't find anywhere decent to eat at night, and are paying tourist prices for bad cooking in cheesy premises. The handy thing about République is that you can go west, into the city centre, to visit; but then just cross the Canal Saint-Martin eastwards into the 11th and 20th arrondissements, a more 'real' Paris, albeit partially gentrified (i.e. about as 'real' as the trendy parts of Brooklyn), where a youngish Parisian crowd live and eat and drink. Outdoors, as soon as the weather picks up.

The canal, by the way, is most famous for a scene in Marcel Carné's 1938 film Hôtel du Nord, with Arletty and Louis Jouvet. 'Atmosphère, atmosphère, est-ce que j'ai une gueule d'atmosphère' ('Atmosphere? Atmosphere? Do I look the atmospheric type?'), delivered with a thick, period Parisian accent, is possibly the most famous line in all French cinema.

The hotel is still there, overlooking the canal.

If you go north-east from République, along the rue Beaurepaire and the rue Dieu (both of which now have trendy clothes shops: The Next Door, at 10 rue Beaurepaire, is abuzz with foreign fashionistas of both sexes during Fashion Week), you'll soon find yourself in 'bobo' (i.e. 'bourgeois bohème' or hipster) Paris. There are noisy bistros like La Marine, opposite the Pont Dieu bridge (which still swivels to let barges through) and Chez Prune, where Beaurepaire meets the canal. Or, on the other side of the water, Gros Bao, where people queue for Chinese buns, and Maria Belza. Even on the tiny rue Marie et Louise, across the canal and up rue Alibert, there are hole-in-the-wall cafés and restaurants, and on a fine evening the pavements outside Le Carillon (a victim of the terrorist attacks in November 2015) are - like the quays along the canal - thronged with noisy young drinkers.

But you'll also find another bustling 'bobo' enclave between your hotel and central Paris. If you cross the square to the rue du Temple, directly in front of the central statue of 'Marianne' (representing the Republic), and turn left at Saint Elisabeth church into the rue Dupetit-Thouars, you'll see that, beyond the drab yet uber-trendy art bookshop OFR (packed in Fashion Week), the street is lined with cafés and restaurants, all of whose terraces will be full at noon and night. Vitelloni, by the way, is quite a good Italian compared to many. Italian cuisine doesn't seem to travel well.

Turn right on rue Eugène Spuller and you'll pass one of the old neighbourhood market halls, now handsomely restored as an exhibition centre, then between the arrondissement's branch city hall and the square du Temple (pictured above), to come upon the rue de Provence. This is where I do my weekend food shopping. There's an excellent family-run pâtisserie, Bontemps, at n°57, opposite the garden, so you might buy a tart each and sit under the trees to eat it. The Café Charlot I mentioned in my restaurant post is further along, at n°38. Just nearby is Maison Vérot, where you could pick up a slice of prize-winning pâté en croûte and a tub of salad for lunch. Round the corner, at 41 rue Charlot, is Maison Barthouil, an épicerie fine where I buy tarama, smoked wild salmon, Spanish pata negra ham and tins of smoked anchovies. There's good gelato at Amorino, at n°43. Or if you want a hot dish in totally casual surroundings, at the weekend there are stands in the Marché des Enfants Rouges, one of Paris's oldest markets (est. 1615: see photo below), serving couscous and the like.

Also, along the street, among all the greengrocers, butchers, bakeries, bookshops and Italian specialists, you'll find branches of some well-known brands such as Ladurée, La Maison du Chocolat and Pierre Hermé.

A north-to-south walk

We seem, in Paris, often to be going east to west and back again, along the boulevards and the axis that runs through the centre, from Nation and the Bastille to Concorde and up the Champs Elysées. Perhaps it's the influence of the river, which mentally (if not quite in reality) also flows through from east to west.

Although it's a very touristy thing, I do, by the way, recommend you bite that particular bullet and take a boat trip. It's a good way for a first-time visitor to get a feel for the topography of the city: unlike the Thames in London, the Seine runs past many of the main monuments (lit up at night), and for once this is something reasonably priced (bus tours are more expensive). But don't buy the dinner cruise! An ordinary cruise will do.

This is the boat company's website.

Now, that north-to-south walk. The idea is to see some of what I call 'royal' Paris, but also take in some things visitors often miss.

One is the covered shopping arcades that proliferated in the 19th century (you come across them in Zola's Nana, for example), fell into neglect, but have come back to life again in recent years. For one thing, if you're unlucky and have a rainy day, they offer shelter. But, tucked away behind the boulevard façades, they also combine period charm, architectural quaintness and interest with a plethora of curious shops, cafés and restaurants. You might pick up some presents in them - for yourselves, if not for anyone else!

The other is the Palais Royal (link to Wikipedia for details). I mentioned the Palais Royal briefly when recommending the Grand Vefour restaurant. It takes its name from the former palace of Cardinal Richelieu, and later the palace gardens were transformed into a kind of 1790s shopping mall, with rows of little boutiques under the arcades, flats above (Colette lived there, and flats are reserved for actors from the Comédie Française, at the southern end), and gardens in the middle. It's totally enclosed, which I think explains why visitors miss it (though it certainly isn't small), and is still a quiet place to sit down and have a cup of coffee. The boutiques are well worth exploring, even if you don't normally dress at Rick Owens or wear scent from Serge Lutens (his boutique is, though, a tiny gem). Detail: the miniature cannon that used to be fired every day at noon, so Parisians could adjust their watches, is still there, on one of the lawns.

You could start at Cadet Métro station and walk down the rue Cadet itself, picturesque and typically Parisian. Or just find the still more picturesque A la Mère de Famille chocolate shop, at 35 rue du Faubourg Montmartre - they were my late mother's favourites - and start there. 

As the arcades are hidden from the street, they show up only sketchily, if at all, on Google Maps. On the map to the left, you'll see I've circled the chocolate shop. The tiny red arrow shows you the entrance to the first arcade, and this arcade shows up as a slender grey line running south to Neko Ramen.

Across the street (second little red arrowhead) you enter the next section, invisible on Google Maps, but taking you as far as the Musée Grévin, Paris's waxworks.

Across the boulevard Montmartre (next red arrowhead) you enter a particularly picturesque section. There's even a restaurant disguised as a railway carriage. Here, as you see from the thin grey lines on the map, you can explore in several directions, and perhaps stop for coffee.

At the bottom of the map (the last little arrowhead), you'll emerge near the Bourse, Paris's old stock exchange, now of course gone virtual.

If you didn't buy enough chocolate at A la Mère de Famille, believe it or not the former suppliers to France's defunct royal family, starting with Marie-Antoinette, are still going and have a little shop at 33 rue Vivienne. Expensive but worth it. Debauve et Gallais' original Directoire-era boutique, one of the oldest surviving shops in town, is, however on the Left Bank, at 30 Rue des Saints-Pères (off Saint Germain, should you wish to visit it).

From the Bourse, you continue down the rue Vivienne, coming soon, on the right, to the historic National Library (Bibliothèque Nationale; there's a new one on the Seine, upstream to the east). Just opposite the library, near a restaurant called Daroco, you can enter the next arcade, the Galerie Vivienne, and explore its various parts. Also, there may be some shopping to do, or at any rate some shops to visit, if only for le plaisir des yeux, as the French say - and a café or bistro or two to rest at. Look out for Le Comptoir et les Caves Legrand, a top-level wine merchant, but also, on the street side of their premises, an old-fashioned sweet shop, which is where they originally started. Also, don't miss Wolff et Descourtis, a shop selling beautiful Lyon silks, as fine as Hermès' but less expensive: don't hesitate to go in and look around.

At this point, before entering the Palais Royal, you should make a brief detour to the left to see the place des Victoires, a royal circus inaugurated in 1686, with an equestrian statue of Louis XIV in the centre.

Now go back along the rue des Petits Champs, turn left at rue Vivienne, find an entrance to the Palais Royal (see map on the left), and explore it from one end to the other.

At the far end, you will emerge near the Comédie Française, on a little square with one of Paris's most curious Métro entrances, erected in 2000 by the sculptor Jean-Michel Othoniel to celebrate the network's centenary, and you'll also spot a very popular terrace at the café Le Nemours.

Across the square and the rue de Rivoli is the Louvre, and if you still have the energy, you can walk through the Louvre courtyards to the Seine, across the bridge to the domed Institut de France (where the academy sits), and beyond that as far as Saint Germain des Prés.

A neglected but unique museum

You'll probably have more than enough museums to see without my adding a 'sleeper,' but just in case...

It's the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, literally the museum of hunting and nature, and I think this misleading name is what keeps people away. It sounds like a place where you'll learn the history of hunting. It isn't that, but it isn't easy to describe because it's unlike any other place I know. It's much more as if a very grand and wealthy family, living in a handsome, lofty 17th-century Paris townhouse, had arranged their vast collection of artworks, objects and furnishings, ancient and modern, with each room, or even cubicle or cubby-hole assigned an animal theme - the deer room, the bear room, the owl alcove, and so on, and opened their home to the public.

The rooms mix first-rate antique and contemporary furniture, paintings, tapestries, sculptures and curiosities. Some have contemporary ceiling paintings. Some of the stuffed animals move and talk. Chandeliers may be made out of deer antlers (in the deer room, of course), or bronze, cast to look like twisted vegetation. Most rooms have a custom-built cabinet containing casts of the animal's tracks and droppings, bones, engravings, and forest views you squint at through peepholes. One has a rusty 'bubble car' stuffed with twigs.

It's the kind of place where, if you blink, you might miss a Rubens, or if you don't look up, you won't notice the ceiling is made of feathers. It's beautifully and quirkily done and must have cost a fortune. As I said, unique, and full of surprises and charm.

Here's the link to the website.

A few practicalities

As you know, Paris, roughly six miles across, is largely walkable. As the Olympic Games approach, there's a scrabble to finish public works and a lot of roads are up, so ground transport is exasperating, at least during the day time. The Métro is phasing out paper tickets, replacing them with contactless cards, as in London or Istanbul. In the middle of République station, a big one, you can ask the staff what the best option is for the length of your stay: an unlimited pass, or a rechargeable card.

Instagram is obsessed with pickpockets, but, while they certainly exist and I hear the warning announcements, I have hardly ever seen any in action. Just do what any sensible people would do: keep wallets, etc., in inside pockets, preferably buttoned or zipped, don't use backpacks, keep an eye open in crowded stations or trains.

Book in advance for any of the major museums. At the Louvre, it's advisable to know in advance roughly what you want to see, as the place is so vast. Best use the little-known Lion Gate (Porte des Lions) at the far western end of the riverside wing, to avoid waiting in line in the courtyard or under the pyramids.

Regarding tipping: I know it's quite hard for US visitors, used, say, to doubling the tax, to hold back. But here, service really is included, so in most restaurants a tip of 3 to 5 euros is enough. Only in a Michelin 3-star do I run even to a 20-euro tip.