A weekend in the City of Light

“Look at Paris in the Spring/Where each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before” (Gigi, Learner & Lowe)

Our weekend trip to Paris, to celebrate our anniversary began at the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet in Kent. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, our hotel was some distance from the city, so we prepared for the walk uphill along the Rue de Dunkirk, a street we got to know well after missing several turnings.

Once settled into the hotel, small but with good views of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, a monument to the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and unfinished till the next great conflagration in 1914. We ventured out for the classic French dish, steak-frites, at a local bistro and soaked up some local colour.

Montmartre, built on a hill at the heart of the city, is easily accessible. We headed for the bars and cafés forming the centre of the artists’ colony, previously frequented by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Then we visited the studio off the Rue Lepic which, by repute, saw the birth of modern art.

Lunching at the Café Sancerre, with tables spilling onto the pavement in haphazard fashion we then walked back along the Boulevard by way of the Moulin Rouge. Walking through student populated Paris, the Latin Quartier and Sorbonne, the Rue St Germain and Rue St-Michel, the tour was a reminder of the lyrics from Peter Sarsted’s hit song ‘Where do You Go To My Lovely?’

The traditional farmhouse-style restaurant behind the former HQ of the Ècole Polytechnique, where a meal with wine must be purchased with cash scratched together from purse or wallet, is a reminder there are still establishments left in the world that do not accept the ‘carte bleu’, as credit cards are known in France. So the diner resorts to counting the cash and enjoying steak and frites, a glass of wine à la rustic serves admirably. Neither ‘a la carte’ or ‘prix fixe’ but somewhere between the two.

The Metro looked more inviting from the surface, with its welcoming ‘belle époque’ signs above, giving way to a down-at-heel feel below. A tour of Paris by commuter bus can be taken with stops at such evocative place names and iconic buildings as Palais Royale and Comédie-Française.

The Louvre Museum was disappointing with crowds let loose with no control. It is also best to remember many Parisian museums and galleries are closed on Monday. This fact can be more than compensated for with a lunch near the Tuilleries Gardens in a typical city centre bar-bistro complete with waist coated waiters. We took a post-prandial stroll along the Seine’s Rive Gauche through the rain, passing green boxes where the artists keep their materials. The imposing riverside buildings of cultural and political Gallic life such as the Institute de France look down upon the artists at their easels, displaying the hauteur of their French Second Empire architectural heritage.

We took the last bus to the Gare du Nord through the famous Parisian rush hour and homewards on the Eurostar with billboards displaying the glories of the refurbished St Pancras station, running fashionably late as befits the essence and joy of Paree