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Off the overnight from New York, onto the Seine. The Eiffel Tower is in the back because that’s where it belongs on this trip.
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Book the tables first. Build the trip around them.
So you’ve been to Paris. You’ve stood in the Louvre line, craned your neck at the Eiffel Tower, and paid far too much for a café crème on the Champs-Élysées. We have too — with parents, no less, in Europe with Mobility: Paris. So what do you do the next time?
If you’re traveling with foodie friends, you make the restaurant reservations first and build the trip around them. Sights get whatever time is left over between lunch and dinner. This was the opening leg of our Multi-Modal European Wander — Paris, Athens, the Explora II and Venice — and we started it the only sensible way: stuffing our faces with cheese, sausage and wine. So much wine.
We had two rules:
Rule one: no Tire Company recommendations. If a certain French tire manufacturer has handed it a star, it’s not on this list. Nothing against stars. We just didn’t fly to Paris to eat tweezered foam in a room full of other Americans.
Rule two: locals only. Haunts off the beaten track, in neighborhoods where the person at the next table lives around the corner.
We skipped the museums, visited the churches, drank the coffee, and ate our way through the quiet side of Paris.
Trust us? Check out our Paris Wander Map.
*As always, no commissions from our links. We encourage booking early and direct. These maps are always a work in progress, and are curated from all past trips and current research. Eighty pins and counting.
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La Maison Champs Elysées: a five-star semi-disaster.
The most experienced Paris hand in our group made one request: stay in Le Marais. She was firm about it. She knows the city. She-Stache, who had done her research and had opinions, overruled her and booked us on the Right Bank, near the Champs-Élysées, in a hotel calling itself five stars.
Reader, it was not five stars.
To be fair, and we are: they let us check in early after the overnight flight, which bought them a lot of goodwill, and the small pool and sauna downstairs are a real perk in a city where most hotels can barely fit a lobby. That’s where the stars run out. Our room had no drawers. None. We lived out of our suitcases like it was a hostel with better sheets. And the “garden view” was a view of AstroTurf. Very green. Very flat. Very fake.
The bigger problem was the neighborhood. The streets around the Champs-Élysées are grand, expensive and built for tourists and luxury flagships. Every restaurant on our list was somewhere else.
Full disclosure: we got 10% off the room. It did not buy us any drawers.
Next time we’re booking four stars or better in Le Marais, full stop: less walking, more local flavor, and the restaurants we actually want within strolling distance instead of a taxi ride. Top of our list is Le Pavillon de la Reine, a luxury hotel tucked behind an ivy-covered courtyard on the Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris. We haven’t stayed. Our expert approves, which at this point is the only review we need. Any four-star-plus in the Marais will do the job; this is the one we’d splurge on.
The silver lining, and we’ll take it: because every reservation was across town, we walked. A lot. Through the quieter arrondissements, from one meal to the next, which is the only reason any of us fit back into our clothes for the cruise. The mistake was a fitness plan. We didn’t ask for it.
Lesson: when the friend who knows Paris best tells you where to stay, listen. Le Marais. We’ve since told her she was right. It hurt.
No stars. No English menus out front. No regrets, except one shellfish.
Typical Parisian bistro fare, done the way you hope it will be: a chalkboard, a crowded room, and plates that don’t need explaining. We came for lunch and stayed most of the afternoon. Eggs dressed up with roe and herbs to start, then the sausage and mash, glossy and rich enough to require a walk afterward. We obliged.
The most inventive take on typical French bistro fare we found all trip, with service to match. Familiar classics, each with a twist you didn’t see coming, and nearly every one landed perfectly. Nearly. Maybe skip the whelks. They were… an experience. Very committed to being a sea snail. Everything else, order with confidence.
A truly local bistro, and the one we found by accident (the full story is below). Outstanding food, friendly and attentive service, and patrons who welcomed a table of wandering Americans instead of tolerating them. The wine list is priced for people who live here. It was one of the best meals of the entire three-week trip, and that trip included a luxury cruise ship.
We steered clear of the museum circuit. We did not steer clear of anything else.
No timed tickets. No audio guides. No two-hour queue to stand twenty feet from a famous painting through a crowd of phones. Between meals, we walked, and when a church door was open, we went in. Paris has hundreds of them, most free, most nearly empty, and many with more extraordinary architecture than the museums charging admission down the street.
We drank a lot of coffee. Paris coffee has a reputation problem, and the old-school café espresso earned it, but the newer specialty counters have fixed it. One morning’s lattes came with faces drawn in them. One smiled. One winked. We tipped accordingly.
And we walked the river. Along the Seine, past the living wall on the Musée du quai Branly, through the Tuileries and into the Louvre courtyard — which, it turns out, you can enjoy enormously without ever going inside.
Evenings were a terrace, a glass of something cold, and a late stroll to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle on the hour. It is the most photographed light show in Europe. It is also free. Both things can be true.
The internet said Paris would be closed. The internet was wrong.
We were in Paris on May 1, Labour Day, a national holiday. Every travel site we read warned us: everything will be closed, plan accordingly, maybe just stay in. The grand avenues were eerily quiet, sure. But in the local neighborhoods, most restaurants were open, the streets were relaxed, and Paris was simply… having a day off. It was lovely.
We set out with a plan for the 7th arrondissement, changed course toward the Latin Quarter, and promptly got hopelessly lost. It was the best thing that happened all trip. Getting lost led us through a neighborhood market, flower stalls and all, and then to a door we’d have walked right past: the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, a small, unexpectedly beautiful chapel tucked off the Rue du Bac behind an unassuming courtyard. Quiet, gilded, and full of people who were there to pray, not to photograph. We kept our voices down and our phones in our pockets.
And then, still lost, hungry and a little footsore, we stumbled into La Petite Lune, which turned out to be one of our best meals in Paris. No reservation, no plan, no stars. Exactly the point.
The flaw, and it’s ours: we nearly let a few alarmist websites talk us out of the best day of the trip. Check the holiday calendar, yes. But don’t cancel the wander. Just point it toward the neighborhoods where people actually live.
Paris treats you the way you treat Paris.
Full disclosure: we were traveling with a native French speaker, which is cheating. But on every trip to Paris, with or without her, we’ve never had a difficult encounter. Not once.
That’s not luck. A few words go a very long way. Start every interaction with “Bonjour.” Follow it with “S’il vous plaît, parlez-vous anglais?” and mean it. Say merci. Use your indoor voice — Parisian restaurants are quieter than American ones, and a loud table is noticed. And generally, don’t be entitled. You are a guest in someone’s neighborhood, at their corner bistro, on their day off.
Do all that and the “rude Parisian” turns out to be a myth told mostly by people who opened with English, at volume.
Built over several trips. All on the map.
Two market streets, one plan: a baguette, a wedge of cheese, some fruit and a bottle, then a bench. You eat better than at most cafés for a fraction of the price, and the money goes to the family shops that keep these streets worth walking.
L’Ami Jean in the 7th is loud, packed and proper; ask for outdoor seating. Coutume pours specialty coffee you drink standing at the counter. Both pass the locals-only rule.
Galeries Lafayette on the Champs-Élysées keeps its food hall on the bottom floor. Printemps Haussmann puts its food on the top floor. Remember which is which and you’ll skip an escalator tour of handbags you can’t afford. For bags you can, Polène does quiet French leather without the logo tax.
Angelina’s famous hot chocolate: go once, order one, share it. The Champs-Élysées cafés charge for the address, not the food; walk two blocks back. The steps of Sacré-Cœur come with a friendship-bracelet scam; keep your hands in your pockets and keep walking. And Le Bizetro: we’ve now held a reservation there twice and made neither one. That’s not a review of the restaurant. That’s a review of us.
Frenchie Bar à Vins, Le CasseNoix, Les Canailles, Janine and the Marché des Enfants Rouges. All pinned on the map. We’ll report back. We always do.
We mean that as advice.
The first trip to Paris is a to-do list. It should be. The second one should be the opposite. If you’ve been there and done that — or if you want to really experience Paris for the first time — the Staches strongly recommend getting hopelessly and gloriously lost in one of the non-touristy arrondissements. Book a few tables you’re excited about, then let the walking between them write the rest of the trip.
We got some of it wrong. She-Stache booked the wrong hotel in the wrong neighborhood against expert advice, and we’ll be hearing about it for years. But the eating was spectacular, the getting lost was better, and we started a three-week wander exactly the way we meant to go on: overfed, overwalked, and very happy about both.
Book the tables first. Stay in Le Marais. Skip the whelks. Say bonjour. Get lost.
No kick-backs for links. Ever.
La Petite Lune
Our best meal in Paris. Found it by getting lost.
Find it on the map →
Les Arlots
Classic Parisian bistro fare. Order the sausage and mash.
Find it on the map →
L’insolite
Excellent service, unexpected bistro fare. Maybe skip the whelks.
Find it on the map →
Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal
Small, beautiful, off the Rue du Bac. A working chapel; be quiet and respectful.
Find it on the map →
Official: Paris Tourist Office →
La Maison Champs Elysées
10% off, early check-in and a good little pool. No drawers, plastic garden, wrong neighborhood for us.
Find it on the map →
Official: Paris Tourist Office listing →
Le Pavillon de la Reine
Where we’d stay next time: Le Marais, on the Place des Vosges.
Find it on the map →
Official site →
Le Marais
Where our expert said to stay. She was right.
Find it on the map →
L’Ami Jean
Loud, packed, proper bistro. Ask for outside.
Find it on the map →
Official site →
Coutume Café
Specialty coffee. Drink it at the counter.
Find it on the map →
Official site →
Rue des Martyrs
Food street. Picnic supplies, top to bottom.
Find it on the map →
Rue Cler
Baguette, cheese, bench. Support the shops.
Find it on the map →
Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées
Food hall on the bottom floor.
Find it on the map →
Official site →
Printemps Haussmann
Food hall on the top floor. Yes, they did that on purpose.
Find it on the map →
Official site →
Polène
Quiet French leather without the logo tax.
Find it on the map →
Official: Polène →
Frenchie Bar à Vins
Top of our list for next time.
Find it on the map →
Official site →
Marché des Enfants Rouges
The oldest covered market in Paris. Lunch counters inside.
Find it on the map →
Official site →