Editor’s Comment
We were in Paris for more than two weeks, which we thought would mean a more leisurely stay but, the more we researched, the more we found to see and do, so those 16 days ended up being pretty packed. Recognizing that our blog is now over two weeks behind (we have departed Paris and are now in Denia, Spain) and fearing that it might take another two weeks to cover all of our stay in Paris, we’ve decided that it probably makes more sense to do this one in installments. We’ll see how it goes…
Getting There
We left Milan, Italy on Friday, March 31st. We had a 12+ hour bus ride planned which we were, honestly, not really looking forward to but, as we have noted before, we’ve go the time and it saves money. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the Milan bus station at 6:00 AM, we discovered that our bus, which was scheduled to depart at 6:30, had been cancelled . This is the first time we had encountered an issue like this with bus travel and we were a bit surprised that it could be cancelled on such short notice.
The company that we booked with did not have an office at the station, but a representative showed up around 7:30 and rebooked us on a 10:00 bus to Paris. We ended up getting front row upper level seats on a double decker bus. and, the length of the ride aside, the scenery was pretty nice. We travelled through Turin, over the Italian/French Alps. and really enjoyed the transition of the scenery from the mountains to the rolling green French countryside.
Unfortunately, the delay in departure put our arrival time very close to the 11:00 late check-in time for our Airbnb apartment. We made outreach to the people managing the rental, but were unable to make arrangements for a later arrival and so (again, unfortunately) ended up having to rent a hotel room for the night. (Fortunately, we had Wi-Fi on the bus and thank God for Booking.com!)
After reading the fine print in the rental information, Colleen was able to negotiate a settlement to have our first night’s rent reimbursed, so we came out almost whole financially. But, this wasn’t how we had hoped to spend our first evening in Paris and it was certainly not the way to finish a 12 hour bus ride. Lesson learned, we have discovered a new appreciation and preference for rentals with lock boxes and 24-hour check-in!
Where We Stayed in Paris
Paris, the capital of France, is a major European city, is considered a global center for art, fashion, culture, and gastronomy, and has an extremely rich history. The city itself has a population of about 2 million with over 11 million people in the metropolitan area. As you may know, the city of Paris is bounded by a beltway of boulevards and is made up of 18 fairly distinct neighborhoods (quartiers or arrondissements), which spiral clockwise from the 1st Arrondissement which includes some of Paris’ most well-known museums, including the Louvre. There are very few, if any, high-rise buildings in the city center (other than monuments) and the majority of buildings are seven stories or less. As a result, Paris sprawls and, although it is theoretically possible to get around solely on foot, it’s more reasonable to use its excellent subway system. (More about this later)
Like Venice and many other large old cities, there is a lot of debate regarding which is the best neighborhood to stay in when visiting. After doing some research and balancing location with cost, we booked an apartment in the Montmartre neighborhood in the 18th Arrondissement on the northern perimeter and highest point in the city, not far from the basilica of Sacre Coeur. Our apartment, 3 Rue Jean Robert, was a fourth floor walk-up just to the east of a canyon-like rail yard which you crossed via a bridge. This led to some discussion as to whether or not we were on the “wrong” side of the tracks, but there was another rail yard to our east, so we were never quite sure on this point.
In any case, the eastern end of Montmartre is a very diverse neighborhood with a lot of African shops (lots of beautiful fabrics for sale) and restaurants (including a Senegalese one across the street from our apartment) along with more traditional French cafes and brasseries, vendors, and markets. Over the course of two weeks, we got to know the neighborhood pretty well and found it to be a great place to stay. It was active and vibrant during the day but reasonably quiet at night and we generally felt safe walking there.
From where we stayed, there was easy access to a number of Metro stations, which we used to visit other parts of the city, but we also spent quite a bit of time walking through the neighborhood. Colleen made almost daily walks to a yoga studio about 20 minutes away and Ritchard found a great craft beer store nearby which we visited on more than one occasion. We always got a bit of a thrill when we turned the corner at the end of our block and saw the bell tower of Sacre Coeur up the hill – a great daily reminder of where we were!
Getting Around Paris
As mentioned earlier, Paris is a sprawling city. It covers an area of over 100 square kilometers (by comparison, Manhattan is less than 60 square kilometers, Center City Philly is about 20 square kilometers, and the Centro Storico of Milan, which we just left, is less than 10 square kilometers). Because of this, we realized coming in that we would probably be using the Paris Metro to get from one part of the city to another and we approached this with a bit of trepidation initially. While we had in our time living in Philadelphia mastered its subway (for non-Philadelphians, it is only two lines – one running north-south and one east-west) but we have had some not great experiences on the New York subway when we did not have our daughter on board as a guide.
The Paris Metro (RATP) is 214 km long, has 303 stations, and approximately 7 million people use it every day. Although it looks somewhat complicated on paper, we found it to actually be pretty easy to figure out and we used it every day and even managed transfers between lines. We were generally able to find a Metro station within a 15 to 20 minute walk of wherever we wanted to go. Except for the end of the workday, between 5 and 6 o’clock, it was rarely crowded for us and, oddly, it never seemed crowded in the morning which raised the question for us as to when Parisians actually go to work.
The stations are relatively clean and safe and, we found, have a variety of décor, often keeping in theme with their name or place. The Louvre-Rivoli station displays replicas of the paintings and statues found in the nearby Louvre and the Pasteur station has a nice photo display of microbes! The Concorde Station, which we used quite a bit, has lettered tiles which appear to be a huge word jumble which reportedly spell out the French constitution. The Marx Dormy station, which was closest to our apartment, was a rough-hewn stone chamber reminiscent of a cave, which gave us some pause for thought, but we eventually concluded that its old tile had been removed in anticipation of a renovation.
The entrances to these subway stations were also often interesting. There are a handful of beautiful Art Nouveau canopies designed at the turn of the century by famed designer Hectar Guimard which have been recently restored. Another entrance by contemporary artist Jean-Michel Othoniel is based on a chandelier he has on display the Petite Palais.
Occasionally, we were joined by a travelling accordion player or other performer (sorry, no mimes) who would ride the train from station to station looking for tips. Although you see a lot of people with dogs on leashes in shops and restaurants, dogs, cats, and other small pets (other than services animals) must be kept in carriers on the subway. One of the oddest things we say on the subway was a rather unique cat carrier with a plexiglass dome for the cat’s head which was reminiscent of a space capsule (yes, that’s a cat in there!). The carrier didn’t look particularly comfortable, but the cat seemed pretty complacent!
With the preliminaries out of the way, we’ll talk more in our next Paris installment about what we actually saw and did while we were here, so stay tuned!
PS – It’s great, helpful, and encouraging when we get comments and feedback from readers. Please feel free to do so. Anything you’d like to hear more (or less) about? Suggestions? Thanks all.
Burning the Inheritance 
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