At the beginning of my recent long weekend in Paris I kept asking myself: what would you want to say to your younger self?
My younger self did not like Paris much. My first visit was in the Summer of 1988, after I had finished university and at the end of a month-long trip around Europe by rail. Taking in parts of Italy, Dubrovnik (then in the former Yugoslavia), Vienna, Innsbruck, Zurich and finally Paris, I was exhausted by the time we reached France’s capital city.
I have just re-read my diary from that trip and it turns out that Paris was not bad at all. I wonder now whether all my subsequent trips were not as downbeat and disappointing as I had remembered them to be. Part of the problem was that, besides the 1988 visit, every trip was with friends and extended family where I took responsibility for their wellbeing. The ability to speak passable French put me in the category of the one-eyed King in the land of the blind.
In fact I did not have any advice for my younger self. My younger self needed to go through all those perceived difficulties to come out at this end as an older self who has the courage and conviction to not care. I had decided that for this weekend, I would pack and plan minimal, and take Paris as I find her.
The weekend was low-key, relatively slow-paced and very enjoyable. Here I will share a few travel tips. In the upcoming posts I will share some thoughts on visiting museums, seeing tourist sights, eating and shopping in Paris. All advice assumes you are travelling London-Paris-London.
Taking the Eurostar
Owing to its popularity there are almost always cheap flights to Paris. I prefer the simplicity of travelling by train. My Standard seats on the Eurostar were quite cramped but bearable. Checking-in and immigration in London was more efficient than in Paris, but their departure area was more comfortable and spacious than in London.
We stayed four nights. In future I would consider a three-day trip and spending the extra money upgrading to Premier seats. I don’t like admitting it, but I did envy the passengers who could skip the long, long lines to get through security and immigration.
The Eurostar website is very helpful with advice on travelling to Paris and is a good place to start when planning a short trip.
The Eurostar from London arrives at and departs from Paris’s Gard du Nord train station
Travelling around Paris
Transport for London has a simpler and more user-friendly ticketing system for its public transport system. Paris’s RATP ticketing system requires more planning as you need to pre-load your rechargeable ticket with a specific type of transport ticket e.g. bus, métro, single or daily multiple-use. If you want to use the bus and métro, you would need to add two types of tickets, one for each mode of transport.
We found that the easiest way to manage our travel in Paris was to just use the métro network. When you board the Eurostar, head to the Buffet Coach (coaches 8 and 9) where you can purchase a rechargeable Navigo card (like an Oystercard). This costs £7 and is pre-loaded with two single-journey tickets. Upon arrival in Paris, additional tickets are available from ticketing machines at all métro stations. A single trip on the Paris Métro costs €2.50 and there are no discounts for buying tickets in bulk. There are English instructions on the machine and you can pay in cash or by card.
RATP encourages its users to download the RATP App and load digital tickets onto the mobile phone. However I did not want to take my phone out each time I used the trains. There are constant reminders, in several languages, that pickpockets operate in the stations and on the trains. It is not possible, as in other countries like Singapore, to use your contactless debit or credit card as a travel card.
Each Navigo card has its own serial number and your receipt will state the expiry date
The Paris Métro opened in 1900 and it is fun to look out for historical entrances influenced by Art Nouveau
Cash or Card?
I brought some cash for emergency use but did not even use one cent of it. Every establishment we entered took payment by contactless debit/ credit card or via cards stored on my Google Wallet. To be safe, carry all three possible forms of payment.
Some Reading Beforehand
As I was quite apprehensive about this trip, having not travelled to Paris for the past 13 years or so, I read as many travel articles as I could beforehand. The New York Times has summarised some of its more recent articles on Paris here.
The book I recommend before travelling to Paris is Simon Kuper’s Impossible City: Paris in the 21st Century (published by Profile Books, ISBN 978-1800816480). It gives a clear-eyed view of many aspects of Paris from someone who was not born or raised in that city, but who now lives and works there.
Travel Guides and Maps
Stanfords Travel Bookstore in Covent Garden (7 Mercer Walk, London WC2H 9FA) has a good selection of maps and guidebooks.
I read Rick Steves Paris (published by Rick Steves, ISBN 978-1641715775) which had maps of recommended walks. There are some travel plans here.
The map I found most useful is the Paris Everyman Mapguide (published by Everyman Citymap Guides, ISBN 978-1841595849). It is compact and the pages fold out to show small sections of the city with notes on what to see/ eat/ shop in that area. I have several of these maps for other cities. Some of the information would have changed post-covid so you just need to strike out establishments which have closed. However the information on things like museums etc would be the same. The Louvre is not going anywhere.
We came across Devour Tours which does guided themed tours of Paris. That particular guide spoke good English and was very enthusiastic and excited about the large paper bag of fresh croissants she was sharing out with the participants of the walk. Next time, I assured her, I would be on that eating tour.
La vie est belle, la vie et court
When I passed this Pilates studio I said to Mr Gochugaru that it’s wonderful to be alive, and the words ‘The New Me’ were so encouraging. It’s never too late to up the exercise and make the most of my future years. He said he wholeheartedly agreed and his ‘new me’ would certainly include a Porsche Carrera.
When I looked at the photo again I realised that the shop next door to the studio housed a firm of Funeral Directors.
Life is beautiful, life is short. Make the most of your day, week, year, life. Our little trip to Paris reinforced this message in a most gentle and pleasurable way.
In the next post I will write about some of the museums we visited on this trip.