Travel

A Self-Guided Visit to the Paris Catacombs – A Sight with Six Million Skeletons

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During our recent visit to Paris Ms B & I did what we had been planning to do for a long time: visit the famous Paris Catacombs. They are located close to the metro station Denfert-Rochereau, not too far from the city centre. Skip the queue, kind of We had purchased our skip-the-queue self-guided audio tour tickets in advance. The Paris Museums Tickets webpage to which the official Paris Catacombs website links to, charges €29 per person. With a bit of luck you might find one of the daily changing discounts somewhere else if you google around a bit. €29 is no small amount of money, but you will be grateful to have spent it, when you see the massive queues which meander around the entrance building for two hundred metres and more. While I’m writing this post, I can see on the Catacombs’ website that the queues are currently […]

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Food, Travel

Au Petit Sud Ouest

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Following our climb of the Eiffel Tower and just before our Segway tour, we caught a bite at Au Petit Sud Ouest, which had impressed us with a Tripadvisor ranking of #59 out of 14,156 Paris Restaurants and a few other great reviews. The menu is short and mainly features duck, goose, foie gras, and combinations and variations thereof. We shared two slices of delicious foie gras pate on toasted rye bread. My wife enjoyed the fact you toast the slices of bread yourself in large vintage toasters that sit on each table. My wife went for duck leg confit with potatoes and mushrooms, I went for goose leg confit. We enjoyed the taste of the confits, even though they were far too oily for our taste, oilier than other confits we’d had in the past. The side potatoes and mushrooms were nothing special either, but tasted alright. The service […]

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Art and Culture, Food, Fun, Travel

Our Favourite Paris District: Le Marais

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Even though we usually stay in Saint-Germain, when visiting Paris, our favourite part of town is Le Marais (“The Marsh”), the former Jewish quarter, and prior to that the home of the high nobility. We always spend at least a couple of hours sitting on a park bench or (in summer) on the lawn of Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square of the city, dating from 1612. Originally named Place Royale, it was a popular meeting point for the nobility and one of the most fashionable and expensive squares until the Revolution, when most of the nobility moved to the Faubourg Saint-Germain district, just west of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Today, the vaulted arcades house some of Paris’ best art galleries (such as Modus), cool cafes, a lovely perfume shop, and more.    We love the relaxed, laid-back, bohemian atmosphere of the Marais with its many young people, hip fashion shops, and, […]

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Food, Fun, Travel

Marche des Enfants Rouges food market

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The many food markets are always one of our top points of interest when visiting the city of love and food, Paris. Even though the Marais is our favourite district, we somehow never managed to check out Marche des Enfants Rouges food market, which is located there, and which TimeOut calls a ‘deluxe food market’, mentioning that it will ‘fill the emptiest of stomachs and empty the fullest of wallets’. The name derives from the red clothes of the children at a nearby orphanage that closed a long time ago.                This covered market has many market stalls that sell fruit, vegetables, meat and fresh seafood, but many people visit it for the lovely food stalls with seating, some of which is partially outside the covered area of the market. We had just had lunch at Café Breizh, so didn’t buy any more food, but it […]

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Food, Travel

One Weekend in Paris

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We love this beautiful city and usually go there at least once a year to try to do Paris off the beaten track. It’s so convenient from London, too. It takes us 20 minutes to get to St Pancras, then an hour to allow for check-in/customs (shockingly lax, easy, and quick, but hopefully they know what they’re doing) and a quick bite, then a bit over two hours on the train to Gare du Nord. From there it’s three stops to our hotel of choice, 4-star Trianon Rive Gauche, located in the same street as the Palais du Luxembourg. For Paris, it is ok in terms of space (tiny, but less tiny than some other hotel rooms). We don’t like the fact that they got rid of the shower curtains during their recent revamp (what a silly idea, there are only two fixed glass panes, but with a huge opening […]

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