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

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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“Paris’ Best Flavours” Marché Aligre Food Tour

During our recent visit to Paris we booked the “Paris’ Best Flavours” food tour with operator “Anto’s Paris” via Tripadvisor (£61.50 each). Anto’s Paris Like a Local had received some great reviews, which alerted us to the tour (even though the tour itself we had not found any reviews on, except for a solitary 5 out of 5 rating here and there with no weight). Our tour was larger than average comprising eight paying guests. Our guide was a bubbly lady in her early thirties who had been living in Paris for ten years but initially hailed from Mexico. I can’t seem to remember her name. After a short introduction and a brisk five minute walk we arrived at our first stop: Blé Sucré, a bakery known for their out-of-this-world croissants and other fine pastry. We all opted for the pain of chocolat, one each, and it sure turned out […]

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‘Being Modern’ Exhibition: MoMA at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

During a recent trip to Paris, we finally made it to the much talked about MoMA exhibition at our beloved Fondation Louis Vuitton. Masterpieces of Max Beckmann, Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Frida Kahlo, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Paul Signac, Andy Warhol, and several dozen further artists were included.      The exhibition followed a timeline and opened with MoMA’s first decade. Works included Hopper’s famous House by the Railroad, Cézanne’s The Bather, up to post-war works from Pollock (Echo: Number 25) and de Kooning (Woman I).   The next section was perhaps my favourite one and focused on Minimalism and Pop art.    The third and last section, located on the top floor of the magnificent building, focused on contemporary works from around the world, most of which were acquired by MoMA in the last two years. […]

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Paris Breizh Cafe Review

Well, here it comes, our Paris Breizh Cafe Review: Widely celebrated as one of the best places for dessert in Paris, Breizh Café in the Marais district heavily impressed us during our recent visit on our last trip. We accidentally stumbled across it on our way from Place des Vosges to Marche des Enfants Rouges. You have to queue for a little while at this Breton Creperie with a Japanese touch (the owner, chef and founder, Bertrand Larcher, worked in Tokyo for some time and brought many ideas and recipes back to Paris; today, Breizh Café also has one outpost there and two in Brittany). My wife ordered ginger and lemon crepe with ice cream, I ordered galette Cancale (named after the seaside town where one of the other cafes is located) with bits of smoked, cured herring and fake caviar in sour cream. Both dishes were very tasty. The […]

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Au Comptoir du Relais – Great food, if you don’t mind rude waiters and dirty plates

When researching Paris restaurants before our trip, we came across French MasterChef TV judge Yves Camdeborde’s legendary bistro Au Comptoir du Relais, which translates into ‘the bar area of the hotel Relais’. This tiny and bustling art deco restaurant belonging to the well-regarded 4-star Hotel Paris Relais Saint Germain (Camdeborde owns the whole hotel) sits in a beautiful 16th Century building just off Boulevard Saint-Germain (Metro station Odeon) and has been celebrated as unmissable for many years. It seems that the hype about it grew even stronger over time. We particularly remember a number of reviews along the lines “they know they simply cannot go wrong” and thought, that’s never a good sign. The best chefs and restaurant owners of this planet do not expose this kind of attitude. On the other hand, what were our options, miss out on this much talked about ‘gem of the gastronomic universe’, run […]

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