Je suis pompette...

My 72 Hours in Paris, Part 1

Day 1:

I can now comfortably spend days and nights walking the streets of Paris without the guilt of having skipped the Louvre this time, or having made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower. This was my second visit to the best city in the world.

After arriving and getting settled in the hotel, the first thing on the agenda was rosé, Foie Gras, and, even Karl Lagerfeld, at Café de Flore. After a couple of hours (and bottles of wine) later, we wandered across the Seine to the 1st arrondissement just in time for the sunset at the Musée du Louvre, some lovely photo opps and more rosé. Le Saut du Loup is a wonderful restaurant option to relax and enjoy the scenery, but it is also always very busy so we opted to skip the wait and walk to the bar at Hôtel Le Meurice, just a few steps away on rue di Rivoli. Redesigned by Philippe Starck, this Paris institution is adjacent to the gorgeous Tuileries gardens and includes a bar and a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. Another highlight is the refrigerator-cooled mirror that’s frosted; inviting guests to write a quick note before exiting. Before we knew it, it was almost midnight and we still hadn’t had dinner, so we made our way to l’Entrecôte, known for it’s traditional French bistrot meal of steak-frites as its only main dish with an addicting butter-based sauce and a simple salad of lettuce topped with walnuts and a mustard vinaigrette to start.

Day 2:

I had planned on waking up early and making my way over to the renowned Rue Cler, a cobbled pedestrian market street lined with food stores, patisseries, butchers, delicatessens, cheese specialists, chocolate shops and cafés in the 7th arrondissement, but being jet lagged got the best of us. Luckily, across the street from the hotel on rue de Grenelle, was another lovely market that popped up overnight where I was able to get a delicious raspberry tart to accompany my cappuccino. The rue de Grenelle open air market pops up every Wednesday and Sunday morning and is located under the overhead metro bridge, right by Le Tour Eiffel.

Continue on to part 2.