Paris, eh bien!

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

Anne & I are off to Paris for a couple of weeks, leaving next Wednesday. We've never been to Paris but we will be doing some of the typical stuff, Eiffel Tower, Louvre and so on. One stop will be the The Musée National de la Marine. There will be much eating and rushing about.

We have an apartment rented in the 10th arrondissement, very close to the Canal Saint-Martin, for two weeks but will need a place to stay for the first couple of days in the city. Any recommendations? I know from the Sliver thread a few of you have been there before...

Any suggestions appreciated, both for the short term accommodations and for sites to see, things to do.

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

To borrow one from Beau:

13. PARASITES: What you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower

[BeauV]

Ken,

Stacey and I adore this place:

Hôtel Relais Saint-Germain, 9, Carrefour de l'Odeon, www.hotelrsg.com Tel: +33 (0)1-44-27-07-97
http://www.hotel-paris-relais-saint-germain.com/

It has this place on the ground floor, one of the best bistros we've ever found in Paris (and perhaps anywhere). This is where your "room service" comes from if you order some while staying in the hotel and they make a tremendously good breakfast - something I generally can't say about places in France.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/le-comptoir-du-relais-paris

The top floor rooms have wonderful views and one even has a small patio that is glorious when the weather is fine. The rooms are enormous, but they suite us fine and the suites are plenty big enough. Nice folks too.

We enjoy walking to the large public market nearby and the easy access to the Metro and the other things we like do in Paris. The walk to the river isn't bad and there are movie theaters and other great restaurants nearby.

Have a blast!

Beau

[JoeP]

I was there in 1970 and stayed in a youth hostel with hard beds, and blankets last used for Napoleon's horses, and then a small hotel where there were a lot of high heel clicks and bumpa dee bumps in the night, so I don't have much to say about accomodations but the city is permanently etched into my mind as one of the coolest places on earth. A couple of weeks will be great. Make sure to take some side trips to the countryside and visit the small villages. Parisians can be stuffy and rude but out in the country the people are generally more friendly, but maybe things have changed in 43 years. Geeze, has it been that long? Gotta go back.

Have beaucoup fun!

[BeauV]

Ken,

If you haven't been through the catacombs, you really need to do that once in your life. There's almost always a long wait, so we picked a day when it was raining as most tourists won't tolerate standing in line in the rain. (Sailors don't MELT)

The story behind all this is that Paris had bodies buried all over the place and still used well water for most of their domestic water. The ground water was becoming quite toxic, even by their standards, so they started to round up the bodies and put them in the catacombs. The tunnels were dug to mine stones which were used to build the city, so it was a twofur: 1) tunnels were already there 2) we need someplace for a lot rotting bodies

There is something utterly unique about walking through a tunnel next to a wall of leg bones, another filled with skulls, etc.... you get the idea. There are some semi-religious sites in the catacombs which are even weirder because the folks who were interred there was all higgldy piggldy with no clear distinction between the bones of individuals, let alone between Catholics, Jews, Protestants and whatever.

BV

[BeauV]

In case it isn't obvious, Stacey and I love Paris.

Another interesting footnote. Some of the beautiful broad streets of Paris were constructed so that the various rulers (Royal, Republican and modern) could move troops around the city rapidly and avoid the narrow streets that the people of Paris could (and did) use as fortresses. As you walk around, you'll find quaint areas with twisting narrow streets cut in half by a major broad avenue. Of course, modern tourists see these as beautiful park-like roads, which they are, but that wasn't their original purpose.

Never forget Versailles was built, in large part, because the King of France wasn't really safe living inside Paris any longer. Most of the population of Paris hated the kings.

Then, there is the old joke:

Why are there trees along the Champs Elysees? Because the Germans like marching in the shade.

Bada-Boom!

This sort of thing isn't unique to Paris. In San Francisco there is a road called Park Presidio Blvd. It is three lanes of cars each way with a lovely grassy verge that protect the homes along the road from being right on the busy street. (This is Route 101 heading to the Golden Gate Bridge.) But, if you look closely, you'll see that the grassy verge on either side has two rows of trees and a dirt roadway between them. This was built so that horses could move from the Presidio to Golden Gate Park and vise versa.

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

Beau,

That looks like a beautiful Hotel! They don't currently show availability online for the two days we need but we may give them a call on the weekend to see if anything opens up.

We will visit the catacombs. I have friends who have visited them and said it is a must see. Thank you for the tip on lining up in the rain, we don't melt as you said.

[Orestes Munn]

Hope you have a great time, Ken.

I spent part of my honeymoon in Paris. We had been shacking up for 8 years, so it wasn't a huge deal, but in retrospect it might not have been such a great idea to invite my brother to meet us there. What could have been a lovely week for the two of us turned into a drinking and eating contest, mainly between him and my wife. We'd just be recovering from our morning croissants and café au lait and he'd say, "there's a place down this street, which serves a hell of a cassoulet" and there went the afternoon. Then they'd start another apocalyptic meal at 2000 hrs, wash it down with about 2.5 bottles if wine and start in on the Armagnac. By midnight they'd be stumbling around the streets gasping for breath and looking for a place for dessert. Animals!

[Jamie]

Oh my, cassoulet and armagnac. You should be in Gascony for that.

What everyone else said +10 Make sure you do a walking tour of some of the better arrondissement. Lots of the older brownstones/walk ups have lovely "hidden" gardens.

And do you need a 19th century cavalry officers wooden dop kit that nails to a tree? Do you need your antique ivory parasol fixed? Do you have a straight razor that needs re-honing and a nice strop? Paris has all of those things.

I pass through at least once or twice a year on my way to visit my father who lives in Gers. I'm often given "missions" to complete.

[Ken Heaton (Salazar)]

I already have a Dopp Kit and didn't know I did. (I had to look that one up). It isn't wooden, but I could easily nail it to a tree.

[Tigger]

We spent a glorious week on the Canal du Midi in the summer of 2001. Our kids loved it (14 or so at the time). However, I guess while in Paris the week before we dragged them through one too many museum ... during a raging thunderstorm in Carcassone (rain going sideways, sidewalks flooding, dog poop floating by in little fecal log booms, locals huddled in doorways looking like they were smoking their last Gitanes before heading off to the guillotine) my son turns to us and says, "You know, this sucks almost as much as the Louvre!"