A Week in Paris

The metro's free if there is smog

We have just returned from a short week in Paris - a city I absolutely love. Cees and I like to go there once a year if at all possible, we rent a flat and just enjoy being Parisians for a few days.

This year our flat was a tad on the small size – won’t stay there again – that’s the problem with booking last minute, the ones we have stayed in before had all been booked. We’ll have to be more on the ball next year!

Le Pantheon

After breakfast of croissants (fresh from the bakery Le Coquelicot) and espresso in the communal courtyard, we headed off each day to soak up the atmosphere. Sadly, for the second year running, there was a little more “atmosphere” than we would have liked - Paris was drenched in smog, but at least the metro is free when that happens.

We enjoyed ourselves visiting places we hadn’t seen before - Pantheon, Hotel de Cluny, Museum des Arts et Metiers and going back to old favourites – the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Petit Palais and of course Galeries Lafayette. All well worth the visit. We even steeled ourselves for the huge queue at the Louvre and paid that a visit too.

Eiffel Tower

The Louvre is exceptional value and you can spend days in there. The signposting is abysmal which makes navigating your way around a bit difficult at times, but that doesn’t take away from the incredible collection of art and artefacts that they have in there. It only took us about 20 – 25 minutes from leaving the metro station to getting into the museum and that was only achieved by buying our tickets from a rather dubious looking tabac in the station ie not waiting in the one hour queue for the official ticket office and then accidentally getting in the wrong queue at the entrance. A big thank you to the obnoxious Chinese visitors who had a blazing row with the man checking that particular entrance as we walked past him enabling us to miss the 45 minute queue if we had gone in the correct way. Goodness only knows how long the whole process would take in the height of the tourist season and if you were to do it properly. Once inside, apart from the scrum at the Mona Lisa, it was pleasantly empty.

Galeries Lafayette

We found a fantastic new (to us) restaurant in Rue des Trois Frères - Le Jardin d’en Face, which was just down from our flat, where the food was exquisite and the prices very reasonable indeed.

So that’s our holiday over with and now we are gearing up for a full working season - roll on summer!




For information on holiday accommodation one and half hours from Paris click here.