My 57th Birthday! In Paris!
We started my birthday off under the rainbow umbrellas of Le Ju’ in the Marais again. We visited this place a few times during our two weeks. They had the perfect quick breakfast of coffee, orange juice, baguettes and pain au chocolat!
The highlight of our day was to be the two tours we booked with Emmanuel’s Hidden Gems. We had heard so many great things about Emmanuel’s tours and we were excited to experience them ourselves!
EMMANUEL’S HIDDEN GEMS FACEBOOK PAGE is the best way to contact Emmanuel. There’s a MESSAGE button at the top of the page. Emmanuel also has a Facebook Group, which you can find here.
Throughout our two week trip, we booked 4 of the 6 tours Emmanuel offers. For my birthday, we had 2 of those tours— The Marais in the morning and Montmartre in the afternoon. It doesn’t get much better than that!
As the name of Emmanuel’s tours suggests, these are carefully curated tours that will show you the hidden gems of the areas specific to each tour. You’ll see things you might otherwise walk past or miss all together. And there are stories to go along with the places Emmanuel points out along the way. I’ve been to these areas in the past, but these tours opened them up to me in new ways. I loved the details of the stories shared, and I really did feel like we were discovering hidden gems.
I’ll share a couple photos from each tour, but I wouldn’t want to give it all away by oversharing photos of everything we saw.
The Marais tour also has a couple well curated food stops, as well. Be prepared for some awesome delicacies!
After an amazing morning discovering some secrets of the Marais, Michael and I made our way to Montmartre. Reluctantly, we decided to take the Metro. We very rarely take the Metro. It’s excellent and extremely easy, but we prefer to walk. Walking in Paris, the journey is as exciting as the destination.
When you come up out of the Metro at Abbesses station (there are a LOT of stairs out of this station, so you might want to take the elevator up), you will see the Wall of Love directly behind the Metro exit.
We took a peek at the wall while we waited for the Montmartre tour to begin. We visited this sight when we were in Paris in 2021.
Emmanuel walked us around the neighbourhood of his childhood, entertaining us with amazing stories and more of the hidden gems an outsider might not notice on their own. The way he peppered stories and memories into his walking tour was perfect. It made the place open up to us and made us feel a deeper connection with it.
Another great thing about Emmanuel’s tours is that once he’s finished showing you the details off the beaten path, he ends the tours in the heart of the area. The Montmartre tour ended at the back of Sacré-Cœur Basilica, a perfect place to begin to explore the area on your own after learning so much of the neighbourhood’s history! HUGE thank you to Emmanuel for making my birthday such an extra special day! We saw so many amazing things on these two tours!
Our expectations for Emmanuel’s first two tours were met and exceeded! It was the perfect way to spend my birthday.
After the Montmartre tour, and a little walk around the Basilica, we were off in the direction of our next stop! We chose Bouillon Chartier for my birthday dinner. We’d eaten there during our 2021 visit and enjoyed it very much. Time for a redo! It was just as wonderful as our memories suggested.
After dinner, we were in for one of those amazing Paris walks where you take in so many beautiful sights all at once…the kind of thing that makes you feel like a flâneur out for an endless stroll to nowhere and everywhere all at once!
After our long wander, we capped off my birthday with a show. We went to CRAZY HORSE PARIS. Fun show! Different.
So ends another birthday, in one of my favourite cities in the world with one of my favourite people in the world! Pure Magic!
KEVIN CRAIG 