10 Tips on Paris

4. Go down the steps that you’ll see every few hundred yards along each embankment of the River Seine to the broad, cobbled walkways that line the river on both sides. They make for a beautiful walk and you’ll get a perspective on the river and the city that you won’t get up at street level. You’ll get a particularly interesting view of many of Paris’ beautiful bridges, often several at once.

5. Visit the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Garden, if you haven’t ever done so before. Paris has a myriad of museums (many of them, like the magnificent Musée d’Orsay in a former railway station, are wonderful), but, like the Frick Collection in New York, the gorgeous Musée de l’Orangerie is manageable in two hours for the museum-goer who has a limited attention span (like me). The two oval rooms containing Claude Monet’s ‘Nymphéas’ (‘Waterlilies’) frescoes, the culmination of his astonishing career, are unmissable. So too are many of the other magnificent Impressionist paintings in this lovely modern museum, which even has a glassed-in cutaway floor in one area of its lower level to show the old Roman walls that were discovered when the museum’s foundations were being excavated.

'Les Biches', by Marie Laurencin, is one of the hundreds of wonderful Impressionist paintings you can see at the stunning Musée de l'Orangerie

6. Stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries. Of course you will: Everyone who visits Paris does. But it’s worth it. A formal, rather than a flower, garden, the Tuileries has wonderful statuary and trees ― through which you can see the Eiffel Tower ― and it is flanked by the wonderful terraced houses and buildings on the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais Royal on its northern side, and by the Louvre directly to the east.

The view from the Jardin des Tuileries at sunset can be spectacular!

7. Walk at night from the Place de la Concorde (directly to the west of the Jardin des Tuileries, though a new London Eye-like Ferris wheel placed in the narrow strip of land between the two is incongruous, to say the least, while eye-catching when lit up at night) northwards to the Place de la Madeleine. Then stroll along the Boulevard de la Madeleine/Boulevard des Capucines northeast the short distance to the Place de l’Opéra and admire the beautiful frontage of the Palais Garnier- Opéra de Paris. Then walk southeast down the Avenue de l’ Opéra to the Place André Malraux, where you’ll find La Comédie Française. At night it’s a beautiful walk of about a mile, maybe a little more, because many of the lovely old apartment buildings are lit by spotlights. It really reminds you why Paris is called the ‘City of Light’ and why its architecture is so justifiably famous.

A walk through central Paris at night reminds you why it's known as 'The City of Light'

8. Eat at the bistro ‘La Robe et le Palais‘ in the tiny Rue des Lavandières Sainte Opportune, which runs north-south just north of the Seine on the Rive Droite opposite l’Ile de la Cité. The rustically decorated restaurant is an authentically French experience, packed as it is with regulars and serving huge portions of superb ― and very rich ― food along with excellent table wine (you order by the carafe or demi-carafe) at extremely reasonable prices. The wooden tables are made from wine barrels and are undecorated apart from the barrel makers’ marks ― and any graffiti that patrons might have carved into them through the years.

9. Buy a freshly made crèpe dusted with sugar at the little hole-in-the-wall crèperie you’ll find about halfway along the western extent of the Rue Saint Louis, which is the central street that runs lengthwise along the Ile Saint Louis. Forget the calories and the cholesterol: It’s pure heaven, particularly on a cold afternoon. And it costs hardly at all. The crèperie, and every other crèperie you’ll find in Paris, will sell you a crèpe with any combination of a wide variety of toppings, sweet or savory, but in this case simple is just divine. There’s no need to have anything on your melt-in-the-mouth pancake but the granulated sugar the young proprietor will shake on it for you.

La Défense is full of modern buildings and colorful modern art

10. Take the Métro to La Défense out beyond Neuilly, and marvel at the enormous Grande Arche, from which you can see all the way down the Avenue Foch to L’Arc de Triomphe. La Défense, begun in the 1960s, has a broad esplanade that stretches almost a mile from the Grande Arche eastwards, under which lies a huge underground shopping mall. La Défense is urban planning at its best and worst. Some of the older high-rises in the area are very ugly, but some of the modern office buildings and the inventive statuary and art dotted throughout the esplanade’s large area are fun and even beautiful. My favourite is a multi-colored cylindrical building that is so simple and eye-catching that I think it’s nearly perfect.

I’ll have more tips on what to see and do in Paris soon!

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Tagged as: Hotel l'Empire Paris, Jardin des Tuileries, L'Avion, La Défense, La Robe et le Palais, Musée de l'Orangerie, OC, Paris, Paris Orly Airport