You May Enjoy This If
You have never been to Paris and aren’t sure you’ll get back anytime soon.
You want to inhale the town with ravenous abandon — quickly, broadly and superficially.
You want to inhale some of the very best chocolate Mother Earth and Mankind have collaborated to produce.
You have recently completed a 10k without vehicular, anabolic or medical assistance.
You Are Unlikely to Enjoy This If
You are into elitist concepts such as “subtlety” and “nuance.”
You prefer the quaint notion of a “moderate gait.”
You get separation anxiety at the idea of chucking all of that choco you bought at the Zürich supermarket in order to make space for Parisian delights.
You are suffering from pregnancy, a heart condition, or Post-Schnitzel Hangover Distress Syndrome.
You don’t want to be prodded along during Your Only Day In Paris by someone who’s trying to manage a potentially sizable group on a tight schedule.
Your idea of a great day in Paris is to contemplate the eternities while gazing upon Rodin’s “La Main de Dieu.” Or reflecting on life, liberty and various pursuits at the John Adams residence. Or humming “The End” at Jim Morrison’s grave. Or learning for yourself, “Is it really true, what they say about the Bois de Boulogne after dark?!?!” (BTW, it is.) Or throwing down a tip hat in front of Cole Porter’s old apartment and working with some pals through your snazzy new “Night and Day / Under My Skin” barbershop medley. Or annotating your Proust dissertation in the basement of the Sorbonne library. Or perusing the shops of the (fantastic) Clignancourt flea market in search of that perfect Louis XIV end table that will at last one-up your neighbor’s replica back home.
You don’t like to sweat or be among the sweaty.
Thus began an e-mail I sent to a bunch of my choir buddies a few days before our European tour ended in Paris.
“Choir buddies??”
Let me explain.
I sang for ten years with a very big and fairly well-known choir. Yes, “well-known choir” is textbook oxymoron, but there’s actually a 0.08439% chance that you’ve heard of this particular big choir. During my final year with this big choir, we went on a big tour. And this big tour was an especially big deal, because whereas the choir had enjoyed a robust international-touring tradition going back the better part of a century, this was the first time since 9/11 that those in charge had allowed it to leave the States, not counting the occasional cross-border choral skirmish in Canada. Embracing a “Go Big, then Go Home” philosophy, over the course of two busy weeks we hit — and were a hit at — the major concert venues of Berlin, Nürnberg, Frankfurt, Zürich, Brussels, Rotterdam and Vienna.
All of which led us to Paris. When we received our itineraries, there was some confusion as to why we’d be spending the last two nights of our tour here without giving a concert. This was sort of explained, but never actually explained. Rumor and speculation abounded, but who had time to uncloak the conspiracy when its result was free time in Paris?
Back to my buddy e-mail: I explained that I’d been to Paris at least eight times that I could count, usually as a result of the generosity of others, and so this time I wanted to share the city with any first-timers who were game for the extremely brisk pace that would be required in order to complete the itinerary I’d cobbled together, which follows below. And I’m happy to report that a group of two dozen of us completed about 85% of it with no casualties, as I was gratifyingly reminded of the old maxim that “the best way to rediscover something is to help someone else discover it.” So if for whatever reason you find yourself with a single day in Paris and want to alienate your hoity toity tourism purism friends while offending francophiles the world over, consider this plan.
In an effort to make the experience feel somewhat less like outright pillaging, once the roster was set, I assigned out the various sites and asked participants to gather and prepare succinct information in advance, and everyone more or less took turns sharing the basics at each stop as our day progressed. And although I specify only a couple of the metro connections here, you’ll of course be able to figure out any others you’d like to make by using your street and metro maps.
GET READY, GET SET, GET YOUR MÉTRO PASS
After breakfast, buy the single-day “Paris Visite: Zones 1 – 3” pass. If for whatever reason that’s not available, get the single-day “Ticket Mobilis: Zones 1 & 2” metro ticket. Visite is more expensive than Mobilis because in addition to the metro lines, Visite covers the suburban train lines that cross the city and it will add convenience to use those as well, although you can make Mobilis/metro alone work if needed.
AREA 1: LE MARAIS / ÎLE DE LA CITÉ
- Le Chocolat, Part Un: Jacques Genin. When NPR High Priestess Diane Rehm asked Mort Rosenblum, author of Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Light and Dark, what he believed, based on his travels and studies, to be the best chocolate in the world, this was it. Genin’s no longer a secret (Google him for WSJ and NYTimes articles) or working out of his nondescript shop in a central-west-side industrial zone, but he remains very much worth the pilgrimage. And he isn’t a one-trick pony: My saliva glands have never exploded in response to a flavor burst like I experienced upon first tasting his passion-fruit caramels. Wowza. We are doing this first (at his Rue de Turenne location, although he has opened a shop on Rue de Varenne as well) so that even if the rest of the day is a complete dumpster fire, we’ll at least have his precious products in hand, or in stomach.
- Métro 11: République to Hôtel de Ville
- Le Centre Pompidu: We’ll see the outside (which is the inside, turned out), explore the plaza, etc.
- Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris: At the very least we’ll see the façade. If we’re lucky we’ll go inside, and if we’re really lucky and there’s no line we may be able to catch a nicely gargoyled view from a tower or creep down in the crypt. [Note: This was before the 2019 fire.]
- Sainte-Chapelle: The only way this works is if there is no line, the odds of which are slim and advance tickets aren’t of much benefit. It’s an incomparable little jewel box of a place which, while certainly no secret, a lot of people miss because they’re transfixed by nearby Notre-Dame. It served as the private chapel for several French monarchs and the stained-glass-to-actual-weight-bearing-structure-ratio is something like 5:1, architectural insanity by pre-I-beam standards. The whole place glows. We won’t need long to soak it in – even half an hour would do.
AREA 2: LOUVRE, OPÉRA, CONCORDE, TUILERIES
- Musée du Louvre: We’ll see the “mini” Arc de Triomphe (du Carrousel) and the glass pyramid in the courtyard. In the unlikely event of no or very short lines, you can in theory run in and snap a shot with “Winged Victory” or sprint to see “Mona Lisa.”
- Palais Garnier / Opéra National de Paris: As in Phantom of the… of Leroux and, later (and considerably more lucratively), Webber fame, to say nothing of Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Offenbach, Delibes, et al. We’ll probably just see the outside, although the idea of missing the Chagall ceiling inside pains me.
- L’église de la Madeleine: Majestic, neoclassical structure featured on the cover of one of your favorite childhood books, Madeline and the Bad Hat. A good place for us to take a little rest, perhaps while listening to a choir or an organ. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette also rested here, in the cemetery that once occupied these grounds, although their remains were exhumed and relocated decades later.
- Time permitting: We’re going to cross Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the fashion strip where Givenchy, YSL, Dior, Hermès, Chanel and others have their “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” haute couture stores, and we might window-shop for a few minutes.
- Maxim’s: We’ll pass and perhaps pause at the foremost Parisian gentlemen’s club of the past century, which hosted such icons as Garbo, Dietrich, Aristotle Onassis, Bardot, Travolta and Streisand, and whose kitchen once employed a young Wolfgang Puck. Today an Art Nouveau museum has been added to the restaurant.
- Place de la Concorde: Adoptive home of one of the two obelisks that Ramses II had originally placed at the Luxor Temple, and one-time home of one of the Revolution’s most active guillotines. Look way up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (once the world’s widest urban street, until Buenos Aires poked it in the eye) at the “big” Arc de Triomphe, so you can say you saw it just in case we aren’t able to make it there later.
- Musée de l’Orangerie: Fingers crossed that there is no line or a short line, because it’s well worth the price of admission to spend even ten minutes in the basement with Monet’s magnificent water lilies. “But I’ve already seen Monet water lilies…” Right, but just trust me on this one. The canvases literally wrap the oval-shaped walls, creating an almost 360-degree immersion effect. If we can get in, we’ll ignore everything else in the building, run directly downstairs, catch our breath with mouths agape in awe, head back out, check whether the model sailboats are doing laps in the octagonal pool at the west end of the Tuilerie Gardens, and continue on our way.
- Cross Pont de la Concorde and walk west along the Seine on Quai d’Orsay.
AREA 3: 8th ARRONDISSEMENT (primarily)
- Hôtel des Invalides: Unless someone really wants to see Napoleon’s tomb, we’ll likely just enjoy a view of its façade and distinctive dome from…
- Pont Alexandre III: This bridge will serve as the perfect spot for your definitive “Paris, je t’aime!” photo op. I’ll serve as designated shutter-snapper.
- Statue de Winston Churchill
- Grand Palais: Recognizable by its famous vaulted-glass roof, the Beaux-Arts Palais was built in tandem with Pont A-III for the Universal Exposition of 1900.
- Time permitting (these remaining Area 3 sites will take approximately one hour, and commitments in Area 4 begin before 7pm, as described below), Métro 1: Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau to Charles de Gaulle – Étoile
- Arc de Triomphe: Nice city view from the top, and a chance to watch foreign drivers get stuck in the Étoile (star) roundabout’s maelstrom.
- Walk a few blocks down the Champs-Élysées, turning right at Louis Vuitton onto Avenue Georges V. We’ll hurry the length of this quintessentially Parisian thoroughfare, pausing at the Hotel George V (to see and smell the famous flower arrangements in its lobby) and the American Cathedral, at last reaching Place Diana and its Flamme de la Liberté, the full-sized replica of Lady Liberty’s torch which became an unofficial memorial to the Princess of Wales after her death in the tunnel near this spot.
AREA 4: EVENING IN 7th ARRONDISSEMENT & MONTMARTRE
- Le Chocolat, Part Deux: Michele Chaudun. We’re going here for one thing only, which is his signature “pavé,” a chocolatey confection unlike any you’ve ever experienced. You’ll want to buy boxes upon boxes of them for yourself, and maybe a couple for family and friends. (Mr. Chaudun sold his shop in recent years but it still bears his name as “Maison Chaudun,” and the new ownership has reportedly maintained his extreme standards, so we’ll be in good shape…figuratively speaking, but perhaps not figure-speaking.) Closes at 7pm.
- Dinner: We’ll enjoy dinner in this upscale and less-touristed neighborhood around 7:30. My sister, who lived in this arrondissement for five of her family’s ten years in Paris, is handling reservations for us based on my requested criteria of “highest likelihood of fantastic food and unforgettable charm, and lowest likelihood of hearing English from anyone other than ourselves.” Depending on the size of our entourage, we’ll split up and dine among the following: L’Ami Jean on Rue Malar (“I want to be embalmed with their riz au lait”), Fontaine de Mars (“a real local brasserie, where the Obamas ate on a family trip to Paris”) and family friend Christian Constant’s three restaurants (Le Violon d’Ingres, Les Cocottes and Café Constant) on Rue St. Dominique, “or ‘St. Do,’ as the locals call it.”
- Après dinner, some may want to head back to the hotel, see the hourly sparkling lights on the nearby Eiffel Tower (pausing en route to let your imagination have fun with the deliriously decadent Art Nouveau façade of 29 Avenue Rapp — which doesn’t leave much to the imagination), or enjoy a boat ride on the Seine. I’ll be taking anyone who’s interested and still sufficiently alert up to the hilltop La Basilique du Sacré Cœur in the bohemian Montmartre district, for crêpes at Le Ronsard and a twinkling night view of the City of Light as the closing panorama of our tour. (Why the Eiffel Tower is an also-ran on this itinerary: The choir had already done a photo shoot at the Trocadero first thing that morning. The Tower needs neither explanation nor promotion nor any more photos, but if you’re seeking a great view of the city it will certainly deliver, and yet consider instead the 56th floor Observation Deck of Tour Montparnasse, or, as mentioned, the Sacré-Coeur and the Arc de Triomphe, all of which feature the Tower on the skyline.)
QUESTIONS FOR READERS
- What site(s) would you add to a one-day Paris visit, for general tastes? And what on here should be removed to make room?
- Can you recommend a favorite restaurant in the 1st, 7th or 8th Arrondissements?
- What spot affords your favorite view of Paris? What about your favorite photo-op?
WANDERLOOSED 