Paris, Slowly A Week in Saint-Germain

The flight landed at CDG just after seven. By the time we cleared customs, collected bags, and settled into the taxi — forty-five minutes of slow morning motorway into the city — the streets of Saint-Germain were just waking up.

We dropped luggage at the hotel and walked straight to Coutume Café, a few minutes away, for the best flat white I had in the entire week. If Coutume has a queue, Café de Flore is a five-minute walk and the pastries are worth the tourist premium.

The late morning unfolded on foot. Rue de Buci on a Saturday is exactly as lively as it sounds — market stalls, cheese counters, cafés spilling chairs onto the cobblestones. From there, Boulevard Saint-Germain points you east toward Rue Bonaparte and the quiet, grey-stone façade of Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest church in Paris. We stopped at Pierre Hermé on the way back for macarons. The salted caramel and the rose-lychee-raspberry are not negotiable.

Lunch was at Café Varenne — reliable, unpretentious, exactly what you want after a transatlantic flight.

That evening, Ralph’s Paris surprised us. It is tucked behind a wrought-iron gate on Boulevard Saint-Germain, an American-style kitchen set in a stone courtyard, and it felt like discovering a secret garden. After dinner we walked to the Seine. Notre-Dame was lit at dusk, scaffolding and all, and Pont Neuf at sunset makes a convincing argument that Paris is the most beautiful city on earth.

We took Metro Line 4 to Anvers and walked uphill toward Sacré-Cœur Basilica, pausing every few steps because the views kept getting better. The white dome above the city at ten in the morning, with the whole of Paris spread out below — it is one of those sights that photographs cannot quite capture.

The streets around Montmartre reward slow exploration. Place du Tertre is full of portrait artists and easy to rush through; resist the urge and spend fifteen minutes watching them work. Rue Norvins and Rue de l’Abreuvoir are some of the most photogenic corners in the city — quiet, cobbled, and lined with vines. Le Mur des Je t’aime (the Wall of I Love You) is tucked into a small square behind the funicular station and worth a few quiet minutes.

Brunch at Hardware Société — an Australian-influenced spot with excellent eggs and toast — set us up for the afternoon. We spent an hour and a half at the Musée de Montmartre, which traces the neighbourhood’s history as an artists’ colony; the Renoir garden in summer is reason enough to go. Then ice cream from Glaces Glazed and a slow walk past the Moulin Rouge, which is more charming in daylight than you might expect.

Dinner at Le Relais Gascon: generous salads, grilled meats, warm room. From there, the Eiffel Tower is visible from Trocadéro and beautiful from Pont Alexandre III, if you want to end the evening with the view.

We walked to the Louvre in the morning, pre-booked entry for 9:30 AM, and gave it two and a half hours. The Denon Wing contains the obvious masterpieces — Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, the Grande Galerie — but the quieter rooms upstairs hold paintings you can stand in front of without fighting a crowd. The glass pyramid, seen from inside the courtyard just after opening, is genuinely spectacular.

Lunch at Café Marly, looking out through arched windows at the pyramid — French classics, good service, the kind of table you linger at — and then an afternoon in a Paris that most visitors never find: the covered passages.

Built in the nineteenth century and largely unchanged since, these glass-roofed arcades run through the blocks between Grands Boulevards and the Bourse. We did a circuit of about an hour and a half:

Metro to Trocadéro first — the esplanade gives you the full façade of the Eiffel Tower across the Champ de Mars, the photograph you have seen a thousand times and still want for yourself. We had pre-booked summit access; the lift queues are long without a reservation. At the top on a clear day, the city makes complete sense: the Seine curving west, Montmartre on its hill to the north, Sacré-Cœur white in the distance. Give it two hours.

Lunch at Café Constant, a neighbourhood bistro on Rue Saint-Dominique: chicken, pasta, reliable French comfort food without the tourist premium.

The afternoon went to the Arc de Triomphe — climb it, the views of the twelve radiating avenues are extraordinary — and then a stroll east along the Champs-Élysées. We stopped at Ladurée for a box of macarons to take back. Avenue Montaigne, one block south of the Champs-Élysées, is the city’s most concentrated stretch of couture boutiques, worth a slow walk even if you are only window shopping.

Dinner at Le Petit Cler, a cosy bistro on Rue Cler, the pedestrian market street in the 7th arrondissement: simple French cooking, good wine, unhurried service.

The RER C train from Saint-Michel Notre-Dame reaches Versailles Rive Gauche in just under an hour — straightforward, cheap, no need for a taxi. The Château opens at nine; arrive early and the Hall of Mirrors is almost empty, which is the only way to experience it properly.

We spent two and a half hours in the palace and another hour and a half in the formal gardens, which in late May are in full bloom. The scale is difficult to comprehend until you are standing in the middle of the Grand Canal looking back at the building half a mile away.

Lunch on-site at Angelina Versailles — quiche, croque monsieur, their famous hot chocolate, and a table in the garden if the weather holds. A brief look at the Grand Trianon — Napoleon’s more human-scaled retreat — and then the train back by late afternoon.

Dinner in the Marais at Chez Janou: a Provençal restaurant with a lively room, tapenade on the table, rosé in the carafe, and a menu that rewards sharing.

We walked to Notre-Dame in the morning. The cathedral is still behind scaffolding — it reopened in December 2024 but the exterior restoration continues — and the square in front is open and quietly moving. Stand at the east end, looking up at the flying buttresses from across the river, and the scale of both the damage and the recovery becomes clear.

From there, Île Saint-Louis: the smaller of the two islands in the Seine, one long main street (Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île), lined with galleries and bakeries and the original Berthillon glacier. The salted caramel ice cream is worth the queue.

Lunch at Café St. Regis on Île Saint-Louis — simple, good, the kind of café that does everything reliably.

The afternoon was the Marais at its best. Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris, is as perfect as the photographs suggest: seventeen-century red brick arcades, a formal garden in the centre, artists in the corners. Rue des Rosiers in the Jewish Quarter is the place for falafel — L’As du Fallafel draws the longest queue for a reason. Rue des Francs-Bourgeois and Rue Vieille du Temple thread through the neighbourhood’s best vintage shops, galleries, and independent boutiques.

The hidden gem of the day: Musée Carnavalet, the history museum of Paris, housed in two adjoining Marais mansions. It is free, rarely crowded, and contains extraordinary things — Marcel Proust’s cork-lined bedroom, reconstructed intact; period rooms from every era of Paris history; the original sign from Café de la Régence. Give it ninety minutes.

Dinner at Robert et Louise: a rustic room, long tables, meat carved at a wood-burning fireplace. It is the kind of dinner that ends with everyone too full and entirely satisfied.

At seven o’clock, a taxi to the Bassin de la Villette for the Canauxrama boat cruise — two and a half hours on the Canal Saint-Martin, through nine locks, two tunnels, and the hidden waterways of northeastern Paris that most visitors never see. The canal runs beneath the street for part of the route; when the tunnel lights fade and the boat emerges into open water again, it is one of those small travel moments that stays with you.

We grabbed coffee and a pain au chocolat from the Eric Kayser bakery near the hotel — there is one within walking distance of almost anywhere in Paris — and waited for the taxi to CDG. Forty-five minutes on the périphérique. The city behind us, smaller in the window.

That is the thing about Paris: you leave planning the return.