My highly intelligent friend asked me for advice about Paris. (Most of you know him, and perhaps he will identify himself in the comments.) He has been to Paris before and doesn't need guidance to the usual tourist sights. For work reasons I've made many trips to Paris over the last three years, so I recommend the following...
1. A few of the best restaurants are Pierre Gagnaire, Taillevent, Le Cinq, and perhaps Guy Savoy. Most critics might put Gagnaire as number one.
2. Michelin "two-forkers" are quite good, but you must book to get in. In general you can’t get a seat in a decent Parisian restaurant unless you either book or show up at opening. If you are wandering around looking for good food at 8:30 p.m., or for that matter 1 p.m., you are unlikely to do well.
3. In The Louvre, spend an hour in the Poussin room and also obsess over Watteau’s Voyage to Cythera.
4. In Musee d’Orsay, gaze at Courbet’s Origin of the World (sorry, I can’t link to the image on a family blog but do Google it) and Puis de Chavannes, in addition to the usual delights.
5. Go see the medieval tapestries at Musee Cluny.
6. Spend a few hours walking the main roads of the Left Bank. Start at Invalides and take the major arteries through to the Islamic Center. Walk, walk, walk.
7. Watch The Triplets of Belleville and spend hours walking through the (rapidly gentrifying) working-class neighborhoods of the Right Bank. The Metro is splendid but it robs you from seeing the greatest walking city on earth (Buenos Aires is number two). Don’t take it. Walk, walk, walk.
8. Go into a good cheese shop and spend $40. Focus on the weirder cheeses. Buy the non-pasteurized delights. Sit down with a baguette and some fruit as well, finishing the meal with small squares of outrageously priced dark chocolate. Throw in a sausage for good measure. Keep the cheese leftovers in your room at night and eat them for breakfast the next day. And the day after that. See how many days they will keep, you will be surprised.
9. Rue de Bussi and thereabouts has a convenient collection of cheese, fruit and bread shops, and it is in an excellent part of the Left Bank.
10. Internet Cafes are hard to come by. You must rely on the dumpy area near Centre de Pompidou. I find Paris to be the hardest city to blog from.
11. See a "world music" concert from Algeria, Madagascar, or the Congo. Or try contemporary music at IRCAM.
12. Here is my previous post My Favorite Things French. Douse yourself in Godard films before going. Start with Breathless, Band of Strangers, and My Life to Live.
13. If you want to read recent French social science (if you can call it that), try Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, Jean Baudrillard, Alain Badiou’s Metapolitics, and Gilles Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus. Don’t get too upset if these books only make intermittent sense. At least they are alive. For a recent hit novel, try Houllebecq’s The Elementary Particles.
Comments are open, and I encourage all of you but especially John Nye and Barkley Rosser — both Paris experts — to make a few suggestions for my friend.
The best restaurant in Paris is Apicius. Better food, less pretension. Try the fois gras and the
the chocolate deserts.
WS Grizzard
I don’t recommend keeping the unpasteurized cheese very long without refrigeration. Just about nothing I eat makes me ill, but I just about died from unrefrigerated, unpasteurized French bleu cheese in 1984. That’s right – bleu cheese, the kind that is supposed to remain the most bug free.
I was a student in Paris a few years ago. My budget was a students one, of course, so I don’t know anything about the fancy restaurants but I did spend a lot of time in the cafés around the city. Some of my favorite one are (all are old style cafés where you could confortably sit down with a book and have a good cup of coffee):
– Le Petit Cafe by the Ecole Politechnique, close to the Pantheon
– Chez George on Rue de Canette
– Piment Café on rue de sevigne
– Another one (forgot the name) on Rue Beautrellis
I’m a chess fan so I enjoyed playing chess with locals at Le Reflet (a cafe/bar two blocks west of the Sorbonne) on weeknights or in the Jardin du Luxembourg on Sunday mornings.
I would say, if you have some money, go to the specialty shops in the Marais or on Ile St-Louis for fashion, art and all things culinary.
Snaebjorn.
That “Origin of the World” painting reminds me of the graffito sometimes scrawled over urinals – “the future is in your hands”
I always recommend taking a stroll following the 1210 Philippe Auguste city wall:
http://www.philippe-auguste.com/mur/index.html
In any case, if you’re walking down the rue Vaugirard (Paris longest!) doing a Left Bank walk, and it’s a Saturday, do stop by the Institut Catholique and see if or when the tour of St-Joseph de Carmes is on. In the crypt, there are collected and displayed the skulls of 114 or so non-juring priests brutally beated to death in the garden of the former abbey during the September [1792] Massacres. Revolutionary skulls are…cool.
I agree with Tyler about the lack of internet access. A relic of Videotex policies?
You might try geocaching. http://www.geocaching.com/
It works like this: a local hides something or creates a location-based puzzle, records the geodetic coordinates from his GPS, and posts the clues at the site linked above. You then try to solve the puzzle using your GPS receiver. The enthusiasts who make the puzzles usually try to guide others to interesting but hidden locations.
The last time I checked, though, France had the lowest density of geocaches in western Europe. Also, the last time I checked, the site was free, but now they charge a nominal fee ($3/month or $30/year) to use the better map features.
More sights.
1. The Marais district; start from the amazing City Hall and make your way up through the old narrow streets. Excellent walking itineraries are available in the Michelin Green Guide for Paris (Barnes & Nobles carries it).
2. Ile Saint-Louis : the small island next to Ile de la Cite on the Seine. You can walk on the banks all around it and enjoy the best views of Notre-Dame. Also home to the excellent – and expensive – Berthillon ice-cream.
3. Close to Montmartre and not very well known is the Musee Gustave Moreau. Housed in the artist’s studio, it is full of paintings and sketches. A very nice break from the touristic hustle and bustle of the area.
4. If you want to do a bit of trading with the locals, the Saint-Ouen flea market is nice and old-fashioned. Metro Porte de Clignancourt.
5. For a bit of green, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is a classic; it’s not big but it will remind you of those parts of Central Park where you least fill in a city : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/anthony.atkielski/ButtesSuspensionLarge.jpg
6. Rue Mouffetard and surroundings : lovely neighborhood, great open market and old cafes : http://www.parisdigest.com/photos/Rue-Mouffetard.jpg.
7. Of course, the Quartier Latin across from Notre-Dame; probably the oldest neighborhood remaining, pedestrian streets with lots of nice and affordable ethnic foods. Touristy but fun.
What is your impression of the Arab problem? Is it obvious? Or is it truly hidden away in the banlieus?
Arab problem is largely in the banlieues (suburbs).
Regarding non-French cuisines, one should follow the rule of former colonies:
the best restaurants of a formerly colonized nation’s cuisine outside of itself
will often be found in the capital city of its former colonial master. Thus,
Indian is good in London; Indonesian in Amsterdam.
In Paris this means Vietnamese or North African. Japanese is not especially
better than in other big cities; it just happens to be probably the world’s
best cuisine after French, period. A great old Vietnamese restaurant is
Tan Dinh, although it has lost its Michelin star a few years back.
If you’re a smoker, don’t ever light up on the street. You’ll become a lightning rod for moochers of all ages and dispositions. Before you know it, you’ll be surrounded by people aggressively trying to bum cigarettes from you. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
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