For all the talk of its fêted spring,
Paris is truly a perennial city. In fall and winter, when tourist crowds are sparse, the city's cafés still hum and the streets throng with natives — well-dressed, portfolio-armed and back to work, refreshed from their own summer escapes.
Running on equal parts pride and panache, this everyday Paris — found in sidewalk cafés or in the bookstalls lining the
Seine — is equally exciting as any of the city's grand monuments. The soaring
Eiffel Tower, the mammoth
Louvre Museum, the cathedral of Notre-Dame — these are all worth seeing, to be sure, but even at street-level, Paris rises above its own hype.
The Arc de Triomphe stands at the center of
Place de l'Étoile, the hub from which 12 grand avenues — including the idyllic pedestrian mall, the
Champs Élysées — radiate to form the star for which the Place de l'Étoile is named. Climb to the Arc's panoramic viewing terrace and gaze down each avenue into the city.
It's the best place to admire the taut geometry of Paris's urban plan, devised by
Napoleon III's prefect
Baron Georges-Eugène Hausmann, who razed the city's medieval slums to lay down broad boulevards. Rows of neatly trimmed plane trees line each avenue, heightening the effect. You can also see the Eiffel Tower in its entirety from here — it's close enough for you to marvel at its construction.
Yes, the traffic around the Arc is mayhem, and it's crawling with tourists.
Don't be deterred — the Arc still thrills.
Any restaurant-bar located near the Louvre Museum should be a tourist trap or overpriced. Remarkably, the consistently excellent Le Fumoir is neither. Under head chef Henrick Andersson, Le Fumoir serves brunch and dinner daily, and stays open late for a fine martini — or three.
Try the stand-out appetizer, herrings marinated in xérès (sherry) with creamed cucumber on spiced bread.
The restaurant's decor is discreet, clubby chic, with dark leather and smooth lacquer, and the book-lined rear dining room is wonderfully intimate. With Wi-Fi and a generous spread of international newspapers and magazines, it's also the ideal place to lay your plans for attacking the city's sights, many of which lie within striking distance (the front door of the
Louvre is steps away).
As much as it delights first-timers, the
Orangerie is ripe for repeat visits.
The gallery's appeal lies in part in a pleasing sense of scale — it doesn't crowd too much together, but gives the works on offer their due. That offering includes
Claude Monet's masterworks, the Nymphéas (
Water Lilies), painted in the artist's garden at
Giverny and donated to the
French state.
Monet stipulated that the monumental panels be displayed precisely as they are seen today, in twin oval rooms that surround enraptured viewers with his vision. The gallery also houses, in its specially built subterranean section, the superb Walter-Guillaume collection of post-impressionist works — keep an eye out for
Modigliani's portrayal of the fedora-topped collector
Paul Guillaume as modern art's
Nova Pilota (New Helmsman). Afterward, let impressions settle with a walk through the
Tuileries gardens, or feed the pigeons from a perch on the promenade.
Time has not sundered the love-in between literature and Paris's
Left Bank. The
Shakespeare and Company bookstore, has long been a fixture of the affair. The original shop, which doubled as a library, publisher and boarding house for aspiring writers, was opened by
American Sylvia Beach and was featured in
Ernest Hemingway's memoir,
A Moveable Feast. The store closed during
World War II, and was reopened in its current incarnation in 1951 by
George Whitman, whose daughter,
Sylvia (named after Beach), runs things today. Out front, bookstands surround an ornate drinking fountain, erected in the
19th century to service the area's poor.
Inside, there's an extensive stock of second-hand books. When you're done browsing, retire with reading matter to the nearby restaurant
Le Procope.
Once the haunt of luminaries like
Voltaire,
Rousseau and Verlaine, its walls are adorned with author-signed title pages, addressed like so many love letters to "Le Procope." The sumptuous set menu (€46 for three courses) is dubbed "The Philosophes."
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- published: 17 Feb 2016
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