Loving Paris Every Moment

Whether you’re coming for the first time or the tenth, the magic is still there.

Paris is always a good idea. (Probably an even better one now that the Olympics are over.) It’s more than a destination. You fall in love with the city. The movies always have. As magical as it is, there are times it can turn on you when it rains incessantly, or you’re crammed into the Metro like a sardine. But then you emerge and see something magnificent like the illuminated towering column in the Place de Bastille. And voila! You’re in Paris!

You can do everything or nothing — sitting at a sidewalk café watching the world go by counts as an activity.

For first time visitors or even for a refresher course, it’s a good idea to get an overview of the city on a hop-on, hop-off tour bus or even a city bus like the number 69 which goes all the way from the Eiffel Tower to the Père-Lachaise cemetery. On the route you’ll pass the Musee D’Orsay, the Louvre, Saint Germain des Pres (my favorite church) and other famous landmarks.

You can visit major museums like the Louvre or the Orsay which has the largest collection of impressionists and post impressionists in the world; or smaller charming ones like the Rodin museum, the Picasso Museum, or the museum Carnavalet covering the history of the city of Paris. A must see is the Frank Gehry designed Fondation Louis Vuitton owned by LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault (who also owns Tiffany in New York and the Louis Vuitton stores in New York and East Hampton). While the architecture is the main draw for many, it features blockbuster exhibits by 20th and 21st century artists, such as the current one devoted to pop art through February 24, “Pop Forever: Tom Wesselmann &…” Out by the Bois de Boulogne, it’s a bit of a project to get there. A shuttle bus is provided where Avenue Friedland intersects with the Arc de Triomphe roundabout. You can even take the metro to the Bois de Boulogne but it’s a bit of a hike.

Churches are a must whether or not you have any religious inclinations. Iconic Notre Dame cathedral, which was devastated by a fire in 2019, is projected to reopen to the public this month following five years of reconstruction. My favorite, Saint Germain des Pres, built in 558, is considered the oldest church in France. It was ransacked a couple of times by those pesky Vikings but rebuilt and refurbished along the way. Enormous Saint Eustache has the largest organ in Paris which accompanies Sunday Mass to great effect. Numerous churches offer classical music concerts — advance tickets required.

Of course, Paris is known for fashion and food. Not every person you see on the street is a fashion plate, but they all seem to have an uncanny knack to tie a scarf just right whether it’s a silk treasure from
Hermès or a 10€ bargain from the market. Watching The New Look series on Apple TV will give you an
insight into just how important the couture industry is to the city.

And food. What can I say? Encyclopedias have been written. People devote their lives to it. Think Julia Child. You might want to rent the movie Julie and Julia. France codified cuisine and French chefs were always the leading practitioners in the kitchen. Only in the last 40 years or so have American chefs and
ingredients caught up. Still there are certain things you will want to eat in Paris — baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, raw milk cheeses, macarons. Do not pass go without visiting the Pierre Hermé flagship on Rue Bonaparte. Hermé is arguably the best pastry chef in the world and he came up with the somewhat revolutionary idea of introducing seasonal collections of macarons the way fashion designers introduce spring and fall collections. His most famous is the Ispahan, a combination of rose, lychee, and raspberry. My other pilgrimage is the Berthillon ice cream shop on the Ile St. Louis for their incomparable prune and Armagnac ice cream (agenaise), passion fruit sorbet, and many more flavors than you could possibly sample on a short trip.

Paris has 44,000 restaurants including 630 with Michelin stars that could require a second mortgage. Lunch is more affordable than dinner and easier to reserve. One vacationing couple I know chose to take their main meal at lunch in a number of notable museum restaurants. Bustling brasseries like Bofinger, which inspired New York’s Balthazar, are spacious and easier to snag a table. Choucroute garni is a specialty. We had a lovely meal at Guy Savoy’s Atelier Maître Albert, a chic modern restaurant in the Latin Quarter, where all the meats are wood roasted and there’s a prix fixe for 45€. Almost any spot is likely to have a decent steak frites and the ubiquitous warm chevre salad. And it’s always easy to make a picnic by picking up a baguette, some cheese, some ham. An amazing ham store called Caractère de Cochon reasonably near the Place des Vosges, has one large case filled with cured hams and another with cooked hams, some flavored with rosemary or truffles — about 30 different hams. It’s so tiny they only serve one customer at a time while everyone else lines up outside, You choose your ham, and they suggest a cheese to pair with it on a baguette and off you go to picnic on a sandwich that gives custom-made new meaning. Plus they’re happy to sell you a bottle of wine and give you a couple of plastic glasses.

We signed up for a walking Pastry and Chocolate Tour organized by La Cuisine Paris, the American-owned cooking school that also offers classes in everything from croissants to sauces. A charming and
knowledgeable young pastry chef led our small group to a number of wonderful shops in the trendy Marais district. And there were tasty samples of macarons, merveilleux, and chocolate at each shop.

We were fortunate to rent an apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower in the 7th arrondissement near Rue Cler, a tiny pedestrian market street which has everything from produce to flower stalls to an Alain
Ducasse chocolate shop, butchers, a great cheese shop, some tiny restaurants and even a supermarket. Totally one-stop shopping. Living like this, you can pretend you’re a Parisian – if you can just tie the scarf right — until it’s time to go home.

Beverly Stephen writes about design, food, travel, and lifestyle. She is co-owner of Flavor Forays, a culinary travel company.