ssander

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DAY 00 - MON MAY 19
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This is our fifth trip to Paris since 2001 (not counting a day trip from London in 2005). We planned to do some things we’d done before and some new things, as well.

<u>Disclaimer</u>: We are not foodies. Linda, my wife, is more adventurous with new foods than I, but we both tend to order things we are familiar with and favor restaurants we have enjoyed in the past. Please -- no flaming over all the pizza we ordered.

Linda usually sleeps pretty well on the overnight flight — with the help of Nyquil — but I have real difficulty sleeping sitting up. The day before we left I checked the seating and saw that the plane (a 2-4-2 cofiguration) had a lot of free center rows, so I took a chance and moved our seats from two outside seats to the end seats of a center section. The gamble paid off — the two middle seats remained vacant, and I got to lie down on three seats and had a reasonably good night.

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DAY 01 - TUE MAY 20
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We arrived pretty much on time. Exiting the airport was breeze — only a couple of people ahead of us at immigration control — and we don’t check luggage. We took the CDGVAL to Roissypole.

We have Navigo cards …but we do not have chip-pin credit cards…we use a no-fee Cap One card abroad. The lines for the ticket machines were actually longer than the line at the ticket window, so we used the window. But our card was rejected, anyway. Luckily we always save about 75-100 Euros from our previous trip for just such situations.

<u>NOTE</u>: The weekly pass was a bargain, since we ended up using bus or Metro 27 times through Sunday, an average of ~0.75 per trip. We would get a carnet for our last two days — Monday & Tuesday.

Our hotel is across from Place Baudoyer on R. Rivoli. With a weekly pass and ticket to Paris (parcours complement) loaded onto our Navigo cards, we took the RER to St Michel. We had determined that — given the construction at Chatalet, and checking Google maps — and since the weather was OK — the very pleasant walk from St. Michel past Notre Dame was quicker than either walking from Chatalet or transferring to Line 1 and getting off at Hotel de Ville.

This is our third stay at Hotel de Nice — sort of our regular place now. The rooms have quirky décor that we like and the people are great. They gave us a very good rate (return customers?). We emailed them a picture of Linda on the balcony of our room a previous visit, and they honored our request for the same room. The location is great for walking (on the west edge of the Marais) and transport. I highly recommend this hotel.

We left our luggage and went out for a walk. Through the Marais up to Pl. Republique, then picked up some sandwiches, drinkable yogurt and salad at a Franprix, had a picnic at the beautiful Place du Temple (really a little park).

Then we stopped at one of our favorite museums, the Carnavalet — the free museum of the city of Paris. This, to us, is a must-see. Lots of paintings, furniture, historical items relating to the city, including some great art nouveau and art deco items.

When we exited the museum, it had started to rain a little. Actually, we were under constant threat of rain the entire trip, but we mostly had occasional light showers.

After a stop at an ATM, we checked into our hotel and took a two-hour nap. I know that most folks recommend toughing it out the first day, but we find that we actually acclimate ourselves to the time change with afternoon naps, even on the first day.

For our afternoon, we took the bus to St. Sulpice, then walked to St-Germain-des-Pres…we had forgotten how wonderful these two churches were. Then we walked back to the hotel.

Dinner was a quick but tasty pizza, salad and wine at Pizza Sant’Antonio, right across a small place from our hotel. Then we walked to the Amorino on R. Vielle du Temple for ice cream: chocolate and amarena (cherry-vanilla) tonight.

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DAY 02 - WED MAY 21
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Generally we like to eat breakfast in our room. Place Baudoyer across the street hosts a market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so the plan was to have the hotel breakfast (they included two free days) today, and buy strawberries and oranges later in the day at the market for Thursday through Saturday.

The hotel breakfast was pretty much what you’d expect…just bread, croissants, orange juice, and coffee.

Our morning walk was from the book History & Mystery, 24 Walks. It took us through Park Monceau and its nearby streets. This was an area we have never been to before, and we loved the walk. Highlights included the beautiful park, the Alexandre Nevsky cathedral and a number of luxurious residences.

Just as the walk was ending the rain started. We headed to the Musee d’Orsay. We had bought our tickets online before leaving the US, so entry was quick. We had skipped this museum on our last visit, and that made it more of a treat this time.

I will not attempt to describe the vast array of amazing paintings, since everyone knows this is a must-see in Paris. But I will say that this museum does an exceptional job of displaying the art…often on a black wall and well-lit — the colors just jump of the canvas.

Many museums have reasonably-priced cafes — the Orsay does not. (At least, we couldn't find one.) We just had some mediocre carrot soup (€9 each).

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the market in Place Baudoyer to buy our oranges and strawberries for our breakfasts. Then we saw a vendor selling roasted chicken and potatoes to go. We bought some and had a wonderful lunch in our room.

Short nap.

We decided to walk over to Notre Dame, but the lines were long, so, instead, we took the Metro to Tour Montparnasse and went to the top, a new thing for us. Great view of the city! After about ten minutes at the top we heard thunder and headed down. By the time we got outside, it was pouring. The bus was closer than the Metro, so we hopped on the #96, which took us back to Place Baudoyer and our hotel (by which time the rain had stopped)…a very nice ride.

<u>NOTE</u>: There is often a lot of discussion on Fodor’s about whether to use the bus or the Metro. There is not definitive answer. We use both liberally depending on time of day, weather, distance, and whether we feel like seeing the city on our journey.

After a short rest in our room, we went to a restaurant that we frequently go to — Equinox — on Rue des Rosiers. They have a €15 three-course menu that — if you choose wisely — can usually be pretty good.

Linda had deviled eggs and I had herring & potato salad for entrée — both very good. We both had pork ribs for the plat…also tasty but (as one might expect with pork ribs) somewhat fatty. For dessert Linda had crème brûlée and I had a really tasty gateau Basque (a type of cake). And, of course, wine.

Since dessert was included, no Amorino tonight. We were pretty tired at this point, so we went back to the hotel for the night.

This was a good day with a bunch of new things.

[…more to come…]

annhig

hello, ssander,

great start to your report, with lots of useful info for those of us who have been to Paris quite a lot of times, and are looking for the next level of things to do.

I also like that you have a plan B - very useful when the weather changes or there are works like those at Chatelet.

do keep it coming!

topeater

Nice report. Please continue. I'll be in Paris for my second trip in 2 weeks. Getting ideas from you is great.

Kathie

Enjoying your report. Getting ideas for our next trip. Thanks!

mamcalice

I am really enjoying your trip report and am looking forward to what is to come. We're going to Paris for 2 weeks in late September - it will be my 9th trip so your report should give us lots of ideas. We hope to cover a lot of territory in and near Paris that we haven't visited before.

ducinaltum

Agree with the others! Greatly enjoying your report and look forward to the additions and will be saving this for my own planning

adrienne

<< no flaming over all the pizza we ordered >>

I often have pizza in Europe, especially in Italy and France since it's so delicious. The pizzas near my home are disgusting.

Your hotel looks like it's in a good location. I hope you stopped into St-Gervais-St-Protais church.

ssander

Adrienne...

Not this time, but we've been to St-Gervais-St-Protais before...it's right across Pl. Baudoyer...and the 96 (our most useful bus), 76 and 69 buses all stop right in front of it.

Plus we walk right behind it almost every evening on our way to the river.

SS

TPAYT

I'm enjoying your TR as you seem to see Paris on the same scale that we do. My favorite museum is also The Carnavalet, we always avoid Chatalet, and we also feel that a 2 hr. nap the 1st day works. Add to that several stops at Amorino and it almost sounds like I wrote your report.

I will check out your hotel for shorter trips, usually we rent an apt---since you go to Paris often, you should try it sometime.

Can't wait for maore details, especially about food.

Carry on!

ssander

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DAY 03 - THU MAY 22
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Up early this morning. Picked up flan and a tarte rouge at the local pastisserie and coffee at Starbucks — both within 50 meters of the hotel. We had that, strawberries and an orange for breakfast in our room.

Our morning walk was to see the Roman arena Lutece and the Paris Mosque. We had seen both in a previous visit, but the mosque had been closed, so we only could get a glimpse of the gardens. This time it was open.

Had an interesting experience. We got to the prayer room, took off our shoes and went inside to see it. It was a very beautiful and mystical place. Only after we left did we see the sign (far to the other side of the door from the direction we approached) that it was closed to visitors. No one complained, so I guess we didn’t make too much of a problem there.

The gardens were beautiful, of course, though small compared with those in some of the cities in southern Spain. Just then it started to rain, so we ducked into a very small café and had some coffee till the rain stopped.

We continued to St. Medard church, one of the many lovely, small churches in Paris. Then we walked up Rue Moeffetarde enjoying looking at the vendors in this well-known market street. The rain started again, so we went back to the hotel to wait.

At this time I went online with my phone and found Le Fourchette - the restaurant booking website. I had never used it before, and it’s in French, but I felt brave. I found a restaurant on Ile St. Louis — Au Caveau de l'Isle — that was offering 50% off a la carte entrée and plat. It seemed like a nice thing to try, so, after a few snags (probably due to my poor French) I successfully booked a table for the evening.

After about an hour the skies cleared a bit and we took advantage of the break to take our Seine cruise. I’ve said this before on Fodor’s, but it bears repeating. <i>Vedettes de Pont Neuf</i> is, as far as I know, the only cruise company that offers discount advance online tickets without requiring a specific date and time. You just show up with your voucher whenever you want to, exchange it for the ticket, and board the boat. Given the variable weather in Paris in the spring, it always makes sense to us to use them.

Back in our neighborhood, we had lunch in the cafeteria on the fifth floor of the BHV department store: two salads from the salad bar and a slice of pizza. The salads were great and reasonably priced…the pizza was pretty dismal.

Next we decided to take a walk in Montmartre. We took the Metro to Pigalle. Probably due to double-parking in one of Montmatre’s tiny streets, the Montmatrtre bus was over a half-hour wait. But we finally go there. Checked out Sacre Coeur and St-Pierre, and did most of the guided walk in the <i>History & Mystery</i> book. After a while, ended up at the Abbesses metro stop and went home for another rest.

Dinner at <strong>Au Caveau de l'Isle</strong> was a delight! For entrees, Linda had <i>Salade de rio dos</i> (shrimp salad) and I had really good onion soup. Halfway through we traded. For the plat, Linda had <i>Brochette d'Agneau, Façon Caveau</i> (skewered lamb Caveau style) with a delicious sauce and roasted potatoes. I had <i>Magret de Canard Sauce au Miel</i> (duck breast with honey sauce). Both dishes were fantastic. (We shared, of course.) We also shared a demi of red. The discount allowed us to step up in quality without a major increase in cost. I recommend the restaurant — and the use of La Fourchette — to all without hesitation.

Ice cream at our local Amorino, of course. Linda: chocolate and coconut, me: chocolate and strawberry. There was a really sweet young woman working at Amorino who turned out to be a student from Sweden working in Paris for the summer. We got to talking a little, since Linda’s mother was Swedish (though born in the Swedish area of Finland).

It had been a long day, but we were completely over our travel-tiredness, so we walked over to Place des Voges to look in the windows of the many art galleries. (The park was closed, since it was past dark.)

Then to bed.

[…more to come…]

ssander

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DAY 04 - FRI MAY 23
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I said earlier that on this trip we hoped to do some completely new things. Today was one of them…a day-trip to the town of Senlis, a historic town long associated with the royal family of France.

We used a walk from the book <i>An Hour from Paris</i> by Annabel Simms, recommended by fellow Fodorite Sue4. Thanks, Sue…it was a great book.

We allowed lots of time to get there…fortunately…because it took us a long time to find our way from the RER to the ticket window in Gare du Nord. The trip consisted of a train ride and a well-coordinated bus ride through the beautiful French countryside.

The walk through Senlis was lovely…but the weather was threatening the entire time. We saw the cathedral, Parc du palais royal, and the market (which, really, was like any other Paris outdoor market).

There are also three small museums (a €2 ticket gets you in all three), but we only went to one — the Spahi Museum. This was dedicated to colonial calvary units and was very, very interesting, even though everything was in French which limited to some extent our understanding.

Lunch was at Le Samson, a small pizza restaurant — and it was very good. We did a little more walking around, but the weather turned bad, so a hurried back to the bus station (a charming old train station for a line that is no longer in use), and came home. We enjoyed the trip, but better weather would have made it unnecessary to cut short.

Our next visit was to two museums that we had never been to. The LeClerc Museum (Paris Liberation) and the Jean Moulin Museum (French Resistance). They are right next to each other beside a rooftop garden on top of Gare Montparnasse. (It took us awhile to find them — few in the station knew where they were.) Both were city museums and free. We didn't expect too much from these small museums having been to the unbelievably great Dutch Resistance museum in Amsterdam.

However, both very, very good — we spent a lot more time in them than we expected. These are probably not for first-timers to Paris, but if you've done all the #1 sites before, and WWII interests you even a little, these are a good fit.

Long rest.

Dinner at Equinox on Rue des Rosiers. We both had a tasty melon with prosciutto entrée. I had chicken with a mushroom sauce on tagliatelle…very good. Linda — the brave one— tried the blood sausage. It tasted OK, but we didn’t like the texture. Linda had crème caramel…similar to flan but not as good. I had something really good whose name I can’t recall: litchi sherbet on brownie-like pieces topped with whipped cream.

It had been raining hard while we were eating, but had stopped, so we walked to Ile St Louis to stroll along the river. Crossing the Pont Louis Philippe, there was a huge rainbow perfectly straddling the river from horizon to horizon (well, actually building to building). What a beautiful sight!

Then home to bed.

NOTE: It was at this time that I got an email from my neighbor saying that a huge hailstorm (golfball size) had hit our neighborhood damaging our siding and possibly the roof…I decided to ignore that till our return. As I write this I am expecting a visit from a siding and roofing man this afternoon. The siding is bad on one side…he’ll check the roof. We do have insurance.

[…more to come…]

KTtravel

I am enjoying your report very much. I stayed at the Hotel de Nice quite some time ago but wilted in the heat. Does the hotel have air conditioning now?

I'm looking forward to reading more.

ssander

KTtravel...

I think it has air conditioning -- looks like a unit is in the room...but we've always gone in May and haven't needed it (so far).

SS

kerouac

Great report so far. I find it somewhat amusing that you ate so much pork on rue des Rosiers. ;-)

No reason to be embarrassed about eating a lot of pizza in Paris. France is the #2 country in the world for pizza consumption (after USA #1) and eats 4 times more pizza than Italy, so one can even wonder if it is even an Italian dish anymore (like wondering if the hamburger is a German dish). I'm sure you must have noticed that there are as many Italian restaurants in Paris as French restaurants. Pizzas are so different in each country anyway that they become national dishes. Even though French pizzerias sell all of the traditional Italian versions, the most popular pizzas in France use salmon and goat cheese, which most definitely make them un-Italian.

Southam

A small addition to a worthwhile report: La Fourchette en anglais is at http://www.thefork.com/city/paris/415144
The language symbols are at the bottom of the main page. The English symbol is new to me: a blue-a-and-white world globe, instead of the more familiar Union Jack or Stars and Stripes. Acknowledging English as the world's language may have been a little irksome for a French operation.

Ackislander

You travel like us, including the naps and BHV!

I like your flexibility, too. So many people plan with the expectation of perfect weather. Sometimes you are lucky, and sometimes you aren't. But it is still wonderful.

Can't wait for more!

adrienne

The two museums in Montparnasse look interesting. I'm always looking for small museum. I went to the Post museum in Montparnasse - they have a great selection of post cards in the shop and an amazing stamp display.

ssander

Part of our flexibility comes from the fact that we are not new to Paris, so if we have to miss a #1 site, it's OK. On our first visit there were certain sights that we had to see, so we were less flexible.

Another is that I make a long list with about 50 sights and their hours each day. This allows for spur-of-the-moment changes.

SS

vanne

Am enjoying your report. We've eaten twice at Le Caveau de l'Ile and enjoyed our meals very much; my husband recently mentioned he'd like to go again on our next trip.

I wasn't familiar with the liberation and resistance museums -- our next visit will be our 5th, so we'll look in on them. We also enjoy the Carnavalet -- I love to take a little rest from all the activity by sitting in the gorgeous courtyard garden.

ssander

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DAY 05 - SAT MAY 24
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Our regular pastry, orange, strawberries & coffee breakfast in our room. Then a quick weather check on my phone. We’re planning to visit Chateau Vaux le Viscomte and it’s only easily done on weekends. Whichever day has the best weather will be it…and it looks like Sunday is the day. Monday looks like the rainiest day, so today we’ll do what caused us to pick these eight days to visit Paris — the annual Belleville Open Doors.

For those who don’t know about this, it is a four-day event in which nearly 200 artists in the Belleville section of Paris open their studios. This will be our third time.

The studios don’t open till 2 pm, so we decided to take a guided walk in the morning. This was a walk in the DK Paris book called <i>A 90-Minute Walk in Butte-aux-Cailles</i>. (I took photos of the pages on my phone so as not to have to carry the book.)

This walk started at Place d’Italie and wandered the area to the southwest of it — wonderful houses and buildings. My favorite part was a small street called Villa Daviel, lined with lovely little home with lush gardens in front. This area was also of historical significance because of the barricades of the Paris Commune (1871??) that were set up in this area.

By the time we home, the Saturday Marché was open in Place Baudoyer, so we picked up oranges for breakfast and more of that yummy chicken and potatoes, added a salad from a tiny store next door to the hotel, and had a nice lunch in our room and a short rest before tackling Belleville.

The Belleville <i>Portes Ouvertes</i> is so huge, one has to have a plan — you can’t see everything in one day. Fortunately, I had downloaded the map before leaving the US, so I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. (Each participant has a flag in front of their studio and a pile of maps, too.)

Belleville is a very hilly part of Paris, so we circled three areas that had a high-density of studios and had a fabulous time checking out the art…painting, photography, sculpture, multimedia…you name it. The quality varies from the clearly amateur to the really fine work.

By late afternoon, we were tired and hungry, so we picked up some yogurt at the local Monop’ and went back to the hotel for a snack and rest.

Before dinner, we took a quick walk over to Notre Dame…this time there was no line at all, so we stopped in. Then back to Sant’ Antonio for dinner — but we made a big mistake: We decided to order spaghetti, and it was unexceptional. Next time we’ll stick with their pizza, which is really good.

Amorino! We shared a chocolate and coconut. Yummmm.

[…more to come…]