Paris For Beginners

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Written by Rupert De Paula

Paris is a city that everyone has a mental image of – quaint cafes and bonhomie boutiques, Gothic grandeur and contemporary chic. It’s one of those cities that you have to visit at least once, like New York or London, just to appreciate the sheer diversity of culture mankind is capable of. So much has been written about La Ville-Lumière already that its seems pointless to produce another vanilla travel guide – rehashing stale clichés about eating croissants on the Champs-Elysées etc… So let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first.
Due to the current strength of the Euro, Paris doesn’t come cheap. There are plenty of well-priced hostels and guesthouses to dump your bags and rest your head, but be prepared to fork out at least €25 a night for a dorm bed – probably more. Hostleworld.com is a good place to start looking for discounted rates. For those in the market for a hotel, Paris is your paradise and boutique is what the Parisians do best, and great rates can be found at epoquehotels.com .

Eating out in restaurants is also a wallet-zapping experience, and running the constant gauntlet of tourist rip off joints gets tiresome (menus written in English are a bad sign). However, stocking up on supplies from the boulangeries, charcuteries and hypermarkets is very budget friendly. You’ll be eating a lot of bread and cheese, but delicious produce is readily available on the cheap, so you’re a fool not to. €5 is all you need to spend on a cracking bottle of Bordeaux, too, compared to the standard €8-a-beer prices in most cafes.

Obviously, you’ll want to see the essential sights. But Paris’ city centre is compact enough to do this at your own pace – so try and avoid checklist tourism and the camera-snap collecting of landmarks. Grab a map and go for a wander, if you get lost or worried just jump on the extensive Metro system (which costs about €11 for a book of ten single fairs) and you’ll be fine. Don’t be afraid to get off the beaten track, too. If you stick purely to the tourist areas how will you ever see what the real city is like?

OK, so you’ve seen Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre (both of which I would strongly advise getting to early if you harbour any hope of

beating the crowds), but what next?

Head north to the red light district in Pigalle, complete with its Moulin Rouge money shot and then up the hill towards the windmills and squares of Montmartre, nestling in the shadow in the convex domes of the mock-Byzantine Sacré-Coeur abbey. These are the best views in the city after the Eiffel Tower and one of the most traditionally romantic areas of the city. Go east from here to find the hustling African quarter and a more urban experience. La Fourmi (74 rue des Martyrs) is a lowkey hipster bar not too far from the Pigalle drag, and a perfect place to grab a drink set to a cool soundtrack.

Bellville and Ménilmontant to the east are Paris’ new artistic hangout. So while there’s little to do from a sightseeing point of view, you’ll find some interesting spots for lunch/dinner and alternative bars later at night. If you can find La Bellevilloise (19 rue Boyer), about ten minutes up the hill from Ménilmontant station, sit down for a luxurious Sunday brunch – all you can eat breakfast starters and cakey deserts with a full main course – surrounded by olive trees with a live jazz band supplying background ambience. It’s €30 a pop, but well worth it for the experience, and you can seriously pig out on the tres magnifique pastries.

A little note on Parisian eating habits: lunch runs from about 12 till 3 pm and dinner from 7.30 pm till past midnight. So eat early or you’ll be caught short in the late afternoon.

Just dow

n the Number 2 Line from Ménilmontant is the Cimetière Du Père Lachaise where luminaries like Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison, to name just few, are buried. It may sound a little macabre going sightseeing in a graveyard, but it’s an extraordinary beautiful spot – so go pay your respects. Don’t buy a map from the rag-traders outside, ether. There are free ones available from the Conservation Office inside the cemetery.

These are just a few brief ideas, and by no means exhaustive, but the point I’m trying to get at is to break free from the crowds of Central Paris and its bullshit fleece markets (I even found one café that charged

you to use the toilet…wtf?). You’ll get some funny looks from the locals – the waitress at La Bellevilloise wore a startled expression as I took my seat amid the Parisian beatnik brigade, but was incredibly nice there after – but that’s better than being sneered at like another member of the herd on the Île de la Cité.

Bizarrely, Paris isn’t the easiest city to go out in after dark – paling in comparison to the myriad trash pits, neon lights and smoke machines of London Town’s clubbing scene. And while I was out there a semi-local (heads up Camille) said to not really bother. The best clubs in Paris don’t like tourists, but if you must give the Rex (5 bd Poissonnière) a try, its size will breed anonymity.

One final note, the women of Paris are unbelievably hot. I don’t mean in a gaggles of tits and ass, wannabe WAG chavgasms fuelled by Bacardi Breezers and Aftershocks that you’ll find wrecked-up at 2am eating dirty fried chicken way. Parisian girls glide with a louche arrogance and effortless, throwaway chic. Parisian men, on the other hand, seem to be a load of total douchebags – hardly the throng of rakish, Nuovelle Vague cavaliers of painted by the likes of Goddard. So what your left with is a city full of hotties surrounded by a bunch of chumps.
Seriously, time to learn some French.