Twenty Ways to Explore Paris Like a Local

Filed in archive Good Read on April 11, 2008

The first time I saw Paris, I was visiting my brother. He was spending a summer overseas, and had some friends who lived in the City of Lights. Seeing Paris through the eyes of a local is completing different from seeing it as a tourist. Now, you can do the same. Follow the advice of Mireille Guiliano. Enjoy!

Twenty Ways to Explore Paris Like a Local

By Mireille Guiliano, Author of French Women Don't Get Fat and

French Women for All Seasons

You've climbed the Eiffel Tower, cruised the Seine, done the Da Vinci Code Tour of the Louvre, visited Notre-Dame and strolled along the Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe.

Think you've seen all Paris has to offer? Think again.

Best-selling author Mireille Guiliano offers her Top 20 To Dos in the City of Lights, so you can not only eat like a French woman in Paris, but explore like one as well.

1. Visit Place Dauphine (enter off the Pont Neuf, 1st arrondissement) for the silence (except for the sounds of the birds), its beauty, history, and perhaps a quiet bistro meal in a tucked away eatery.

2. Walk along the Seine from the Pont Neuf past the timeless bouquinistes with their used books and magazines to Ile St-Louis, the smaller of the two islands in the Seine (4th arr.). Treat yourself to an ice cream on the island at Berthillon (31 rue de Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile), long celebrated by Parisians and visitors.

3. Watch the ducks at the Fontaine de Médicis in the Luxembourg Garden (6th arr.), and on weekends the children sailing toy boats in the larger fountain in the Gardens behind the Sénat. Bring a book and claim a chair.

4. Pick up freshly baked croissants at Carton (6 rue de Buci, 6th arr.) any morning except Monday. They are the best, and you can always sit down at one of the several near-by cafés for a grand crème (large coffee with steamed milk) with a bite of your croissant.

5. Rent a car and drive around on the weekend, especially on Sunday morning when Paris is at its sleepiest.

6. Go to the Raspail Marché Biologique, the lively outdoor organic food market, held on Sunday (rue Cherche-Midi to rue de Rennes, 6th arr.).

7. Enjoy the towering plateau de fruits de mer seafood platter at Le Procope, one of Paris' most historic restaurants-with 18th and 19th-century décor and busts of Voltaire and others who dined there. (13 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, 6th arr.).

8. Enjoy street artists' performances, "artistes de rue," in front of Centre Pompidou (4th arr.) or on the Pont St. Louis behind Notre Dame, where on a Sunday there will be jugglers, musicians, fire-eaters and lots of laughs.

9. Visit the flower market, Marché aux Fleurs, bordering on the Seine not far from Notre Dame on the Place Louis-Lépine (4th arr.). The shops and stalls are alive with colorful flowers and plants, and on Sundays additional merchants arrive with cages of birds and some small animals.

10. If you speak un peu de Francais and want to experience a meal where you both help cook and eat with Parisians, run to L'Atelier des Chefs (10 rue Penthièvre, 8th arr.) created by brothers Nicolas and Francois Bergerault. In a great setting, you'll spend half an hour preparing and the rest tasting under the direction of a chef. Other options include dinner for 2, 4 or take out.

11. Cookbook browse through more than 8,000 cookbooks, mostly in French but some in English, at Librairie Gourmande (4 rue Dante, 5th arr.).

12. For the literary minded, visit two of my favorite little spots on the Right Bank: Maison de Balzac (47 rue Raynouard, 16th arr.), which is a museum displaying not only his manuscripts and first editions but also paintings and drawings of his family and friends, and Musée de la Vie Romantique (16 rue Chaptal, 9th arr.) devoted to George Sand (famous not only as a writer but for her romantic liaison with Chopin).

13. Buy a newspaper, find a sidewalk café, order a coffee, tea, citron pressé, glass of wine, or whatever, and settle in for some serious people watching and occasional reading, like a vrai French woman. If you want to add the Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir legend to the experience, head for the famous Café de Flore (172 boulevard Saint-Germain, 6th arr.). Enjoy a drink on the street level, but ask for a table in the upstairs dining room if you want to order a decent, simple meal among regulars.

14. Go to one of the frequent chamber or religious music concerts in the heart of the Latin Quarter at Église St-Julien-le Pauvre (1 Rue St-Julien-le-Pauvre 5th arr.), one of the oldest (and smallest) churches in Paris.

15. Take a leisurely stroll along the Canal Saint-Martin, the 2.5 mile canal commissioned by Napoleon to connect the Seine with France's northeast canal system. You can stroll along its banks in the 10th arr. in the shade amid artsy boutiques, bars, and in sight of iron footbridges and locks. On Sundays in good weather, the area is alive with pedestrians and bicyclists as the Quai de Valmy and Quai de Jemmapes are closed to traffic. You can have an unusual glimpse of hidden Paris and a special experience if you travel the canal with its eight locks by open boat (departures are from either end of the canal several times a day).

16. After you've visited the chic boutiques and haute-couture emporiums of Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and avenue Montaigne in the 8th arr., shop a bit off track at edgy clothing and designs shops on and around rue Poitou and rue Pastourelle in the 3rd arr.

17. Rent a velolib, the bicycles available to pick up and drop off at stands all over Paris and peddle the backstreets of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th arrondisements (for starters), especially on the weekend. (You may have to stop now and again at a pastry shop for a little fuel.)

18. Because small is beautiful, visit one or more of the small Left Bank museums, notably Musée du Luxembourg at the Luxembourg Gardens featuring temporary exhibitions; The Musée Rodin in the Hotel Biron (77, rue de Varenne, 7th arr.) in the mansion where Rodin lived, includes some of his best and most famous bronze and marble work, works by Camille Claudel, Van Gogh, Monet; also in the 7th arr. in a townhouse the Musée Maillol (61 rue de Grenelle), where the full range of the works of the sculptor, woodworker and artist, Aristide Maillol are on display as well as a range of mostly 20th-century artists: French naïve art, paintings by Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Ingres, Cézanne,Valadon, Foujita, Dufy, Bonnard, Redon, Gauguin, Rodin, Poliakoff, Kandinsky, Duchamp,Villon, Gilioli, Couturier, Zitman, and Russian artists.

19. Visit the Galerie Vivienne in the 2nd arr. (4 rue des Petits-Champs, 6 rue Vivienne, 3 rue de la Banque), the most luxurious and handsome of the Paris' passages, the covered gallery shopping arcades dating from the early 19th century. With its mosaic flooring, period lamps, original glass roof, magnificent rotunda and Empire period decoration, this arcade is a great place to browse exclusive shops for clothes, shoes, jewelry and accessories. Lunch or enjoy afternoon tea inside the gallery at the quiet, chic and delicious A Priori-Thé.

20. Enjoy divine chocolate at Pierre Marcolini (89 rue de Seine, 6th arr.)