Hemingway knew about Paris and how it infiltrates you, once you’ve been there. He understood the ever-present need one has to return there, like a salmon running upstream and fighting against the current to return, to return, to return…for Paris gets into you, and calls you back. For Paris is a moveable feast hard to ignore, hard to stay away from. Hard, even, to turn away from.
We are returning to the magical city! Our passage is booked. We will spend a little of our September (2023) walking the streets of Paris once again. Two weeks this time. We will see the places we’ve already seen and some we missed. We will venture daily from our hotel on the outskirts of Le Marais this time. Nothing against the 9th Arrondissement (where we stayed in 2021) or Île Saint-Louis in the 4th (where I stayed in 2014)! We loved staying so close to the Moulin Rouge and Boulevard de Clichy! And I really enjoyed staying down the street from Notre-Dame! But it will be nice to stay in a different neighbourhood…experience a different vibe yet again. Besides, the Saint-Louis is only a stone’s throw from the Marais!
But this is still months away. 225 days, to be exact. Not that I’m counting. But let’s just be honest…I’m counting.
Having just disembarked from Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas not quite two weeks ago, I am already counting down to our next adventure with a degree of desperation.
Many of our mornings and nights in October of 2021 were spent walking into and out of our neighbourhood…which meant crossing the Champs-Élysées repeatedly. Look! There’s the Arc!
As we map out our stay in Paris, I already worry about our itinerary. Will we see everything we want to see? Will we forget something only to remember it when we’re on the plane on the way home? Will we have enough time? I’m already experiencing FOMO!
On our last night in Paris in October, 2021, we ran up the street from our hotel for one last view of the Moulin Rouge. Our last selfie in Paris that year. (PS: The bus did not hit us!)
This trip’s itinerary will have a mix of overlapping items with the last trip, as well as a lot of new items. There are some things I want to see during every Paris trip. Some of the new ones will be Paris Disney and Mont-Saint-Michel. As well as a few other sights we missed. I’m dying to visit Montparnasse!
Also, though a picnic was on our itinerary for 2021, we didn’t quite make it. It is my goal to do it this time around. It was great fun with the Left Bank Writers Retreat in 2014! Maybe somewhere in or near Square du Vert-Galant! That is the goal, anyway! We’ll get a baguette, some cheese, a little wine…it’ll be magic!
There are so many museums in Paris, that we only saw a fraction of them during our last visit. We’ll hit a few that we missed and probably do one or two that we have already visited. It would take a month to see all of the Louvre. It is impossible to see it all in one visit. Also, what’s a trip to Paris without going to Shakespeare & Company?! I couldn’t imagine it! I also want to go to their new(ish) coffee shop next door. I don’t know why we didn’t think to go there on our last visit.
One of my favourite days in Paris in 2021 was our DAY OF THE DEAD! This turned out to be a thematic day filled with all things dead, from the Catacombes, to Père Lachaise Cemetery to the Panthéon. It would have been the perfect Paris day, had the booked tour through Père Lachaise been unceremoniously and without warning cancelled. We had to wander through that city of a cemetery on our own. We still managed to find a lot of the graves we wanted to visit, but without the tour we felt we did not do it justice. Hopefully, now that we’re further along in this forever-pandemic, the tour we book this time won’t be cancelled at the last minute. I want context with my stroll through the cemetery.
La Closerie des Lilas, a must when in Paris for me!
The list of restaurants is growing so quickly, I’m afraid we won’t have enough days to visit all the ones we wish to see. We will be narrowing it down in the coming weeks. One I like to return to is La Closerie des Lilas. It’s not incredible, but it has an incredible literary history. It draws me to it. Maybe just a cocktail next time? Maybe with an appetizer?
From my June 2014 trip with Left Bank Writers Retreat…new writer friend, Nina! Atop the Arc.
If we miss anything, I suppose we can always do it on our NEXT trip after this one. There will always be a next trip, right?! There is never any end to Paris!
Only 225 days to go. That seems like a lifetime when there are several inches of snow on the ground and a cold-snap is threatening to overwhelm us. The countdown is on…
It’s been almost a year now since we last visited Paris. An entire year! Each time I go, it becomes more dear to my heart. More than any other of my sacred places in this world, Paris is the closest to my heart. I know, without even contemplating it all that much, that I could live there in an instant.
Hamming it up atop the Arc de Triomphe at the end of Av. des Champs-Élysées, Paris, France. (Oct. 2021)
Despite my oft repeated promise to myself that I would not visit a place more than once because there are too many places to visit, I find myself planning for the next Paris trip. Having just returned from there in October, 2021, we are indeed going back in 2023.
Paris truly is a moveable feast!
What we saw of beyond the city last year has me wanting to tour the entire country of France. Even as I dream of my next hike on the Camino de Santiago, I consider the pilgrimage path known as Chemin du Puy. Le Puy looks as stunning as the rest of France. To begin a walk in Le Puy-en-Velay? The mere idea is dreamlike. Walking through all those tiny French towns? Heaven.
I guess all of France has me. I’m still living the memories of our quick visit to Giverny to visit Monet’s home and gardens. Even in October, the blooms were plentiful. The house was a fairy-tale one can easily imagine falling into and never leaving.
Monet’s kitchen…a wonder of its own.Just to peek out a window in Monet’s house, to see what he saw? The colours of the rainbow. It was sheer magic!Though not in Paris, I cannot think of Paris without also thinking about the fascinating locations just a short ride away from the City of Light.
In 2023 we plan on staying in the Marais. We merely skirted this historic district of Paris during our 2021 visit. With so much to see, you always miss something…you always have a reason to go back.
We raced to see all that we could in the week we allotted ourselves to see it. From my favourite neighbourhood of Montmartre…
…to my favourite bookstore in all the world, Shakespeare & Company…
The facade of the world famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore (the second incarnation).Shakespeare’s cat…
There’s just something about Paris. I feel comfortable there, more myself. The way it’s a walkable city, the way it’s a city of cafes and museums and art galleries. The way even the dead have their place and relevance… significance. The way a bonjour is expected and a picnic is encouraged. The way history can be found in layers upon layers as you walk its streets. It’s just fully mine in a way that no other city is.
Paris is a city that belongs fully and completely to all of its adoring fans. It is so multifaceted that there’s enough to go around, enough for everyone to love and feel a special connection to. There are as many Parises as there are people who adore Paris. Or, without bastardizing the English language by attempting to pluralize Paris, your Paris is different from my Paris.
We’re currently planning all the things we will visit that we missed–or walked right past–on our last visit. But we’ll definitely be revisiting a lot of places. There are places in Paris that I can’t imagine not visiting every single time I’m there.
These must visit places include, but are not limited to, Shakespeare & Company, Rue Saint Louis en l’île, the Tuileries, Jardin du Luxembourg, and more. These are necessary places in my Paris. Even the overpriced La Closerie des Lilas feels like a necessary stop for me. Even with the indifferent waiter we had during our last experience there. My Paris just needs to include certain places.
Can we go to Paris without going to the Daru Staircase at the Louvre, where Audrey Hepburn iconically posed in front of the Winged Victory of Samothrace?! I think not!
We’ll be making a list over the next year, and checking it twice. If you have any favourite places in Paris that are off the beaten path…something you might think travelers overlook…drop the info in the comments section. I’d love to discover something new that’s not already on my radar. The list of places we haven’t visited yet is surprisingly quite extensive, considering the places I’ve already checked off the list during previous visits. But I’d love to find something new to love about my favourite city!
The places we visited in 2021 are favourited on this Google map. We covered a LOT of ground, but not enough. We still have so much to see!
Whoever said you can’t walk everywhere in Paris hasn’t met Michael and I. Last October we proved all naysayers wrong by the power of our own four feet. One of the best days of our week was the one we named our DAY OF THE DEAD.
No, we didn’t die that day. Trust me, it was a thematic name choice.
In Paris, we stayed in the 9th at an unassuming little hotel called Hôtel de Paris Saint Georges. We don’t go big on hotels, because they’re only for sleeping in when your goal is to take in every inch of every city you visit. The hotel is not important, as long as it’s clean.
Our first goal on the Day of the Dead was to make our way to Père Lachaise Cemetery all the way over in the 20th arrondissement. Google Maps told us it was a mere 5.2km away. A walk in the park that would take us 1 hour and 8 minutes, according to Google. Google also doesn’t know us. We knew we could cut that number down to an hour.
My first time in Paris was action packed with Left Bank Writers Retreat stuff, so I didn’t get to see Père Lachaise. The days were too fully planned out to sneak away, and the cemetery was closed at night. Who closes a cemetery at night?! The nerve!
I had several graves on my visiting wish-list, and we booked a walking tour at the cemetery to make things easy for us. It’s a huge cemetery!
Unfortunately, our Day of the Dead was going to begin with a fail. Not surprising, since we were still dead in the middle of the pandemic. The tour didn’t sell enough tickets, so it was cancelled. The worst part was that the tour company didn’t tell us it was cancelled. Michael and I stood by the designated Metro stop waiting for the guide to appear for far too long. After doing several somersaults and finally contacting the tour guide people, we discovered we had been waiting in vain. We were on our own.
Even though we didn’t see everyone on the list, we did manage to see a few of the famous people I wanted to visit. Having waited decades to see this historic cemetery, I was not disappointed. Sure, it would have been a hundred percent better with the accompaniment of a guide, but it was still an amazing morning!
Oscar Wilde
We saw Wilde, Piaf, Proust, Moliere, Balzac, Chopin, and Morrison, among others. Then we accepted our defeat and put Père Lachaise onto the bingo card for our next visit to Paris. Next time, hopefully, we will have a guide. There’s still quite a few people on my wish-list that we missed. Take my word for it, if you’re going to visit Père Lachaise, get a guided tour. You may think you can do it alone, but it is really overwhelming once you’re there. Even with a paper map or Google Maps. I was just too overwhelmed to remember half the names I wanted to visit. And we did some crisscrossing we could have avoided. GET. A. GUIDE.
Marcel Proust
With our mad dash throughout the cemetery over, we were off to our next stop! Did somebody say Panthéon?! And how does the Panthéon work into our Day of the Dead, you might ask if you’re not familiar with the building in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Off to the 5th arrondissement we go!
Panthéon, temple to all the gods. Sitting atop Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon (Built from 1758-1790), once a church, is now a mausoleum for the remains of France’s most distinguished citizens. This incarnation of a mausoleum could very well be the building’s last and eternal purpose.
Once we made the brisk 4.1km walk from Père Lachaise, with a quick stop at a yummy Indian restaurant we stumbled upon along the way, we were ready to meet more of history’s illustrious dead.
We visited almost everyone resting there. From Voltaire to Zola.
Voltaire!
A highlight of the visit, for me as a writer and reader, was Emile Zola, Alexandre Dumas, and Victor Hugo.
Emile ZolaAlexandre DumasVictor Hugo
Since we were in the neighbourhood (the Latin Quarter in the 5th arrondissement), we also visited Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, which is just behind the Panthéon. This church was made newly famous after appearing in the movie Midnight in Paris. I had visited the church back in 2014 when the Panthéon was closed for some restorative work. We took an iconic (to us) photo of ourselves on the church steps where Gil sat in Midnight in Paris, right before he was whisked away into the Paris of the 1920s.
The 2014 Left-Bank Writers Retreat. Look it up, it’s an amazing retreat for writers. Takes place in Paris every year.
And here’s the facade of the church. The steps made famous in the movie are on the left hand side of the photo below.
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, October, 2021.
After visiting the greatest of France’s late citizens, we were off to visit the bones of some of Paris’s late great cemeteries. Say that ten times fast. Anyway, Catacombes de Paris in the 14th arrondissement were the next stop on our Day of the Dead.
If you can, always get your tickets online in advance. You will avoid a headache, or even the possibility of being turned away at the door.
The Catacombes were another place I missed on my last visit to Paris, and, therefore, a must see during this visit. We made the 2.7km walk in no time, even with the quick detour through the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement! We couldn’t walk by this treasure when we could almost as easily walk through it!
The very modern entrance to a very gothic dungeon-like attraction.
Getting down to the dark underbelly was a feat in itself. The spiral staircase brought back memories of climbing the never-ending staircase to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, or the just-as-deadly staircase to the top of the Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre. Paris sure does love the spiral staircase!
Climb down into the underbelly of Paris, via the endless spiral staircase…
The Catacombes were everything we hoped they would be. Death made creepy by darkness and dirt, with a little dripping wetness thrown in for good measure. We were under Paris, surrounded by the bones of millions of long-dead displaced Parisiennes.
Watch your head!
After the staircase comes a very narrow passageway with a low ceiling and damp darkness…
The Catacombes holds the remains of over 6 million people. It is something to see. If you’re visiting Paris and have no problems with mobility issues or claustrophobia, I highly recommend it. I will say, however, that it is probably a one and done. There are many places in Paris I will visit again and again. The Catacombes, incredible as it was to experience, probably isn’t one of them.
You really do become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of bones you see. And what is open to the public is merely the tip of the iceberg.
The crazy wide-eyed expression?!
The parts of the Catacombes open to public are roughly 1km in length. You’ll never guess where one arrives after climbing the almost identical spiral staircase up out of the dungeons of Paris. That’s right! A gift shop! All of the world’s attractions and rides now deposits its adventurers off into the coveted gift shop. A sure sign of Commerce Above All Else!
After our tour of dead things, we capped off our day at my restaurant of choice in the hopes of having a chance encounter with a ghost from Paris’s glorious literary past. Between the Catacombes and the Jardin du Luxembourg, you will come to one of Paris’s most famous literary restaurants. That’s saying a lot, as quite a few of Paris’s restaurants were made famous by the patronage of many of its literary elite from the time of the Lost Generation.
The one I chose was La Closerie des Lilas, which was a mere 850m from the Catacombes.
We had a lovely (if overpriced) meal outside on the patio while I imagined Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald tucked away in a corner making literary chatter and writing away in their battered journals while drinking light aperitifs.
And just like my son Jacob used to do whenever we visited a new restaurant when he was a little boy, I made the excuse to use the facilities so I could snoop around some.
At the bar, if you look closely enough, you will see a tiny brass nameplate screwed into the bar top at one of the available chairs. It says ERNEST HEMINGWAY. This is where Ernest sat at times.
With dinner over, so too was our day at its end. Almost. In Paris, the day is always only almost over…
La Closerie des Lilas, near the end of the daylight…
Now, we only had to walk home! And you bet we made some stops along the way. The dead things may have been behind us, but there was still a lot to see!
The Pantheon at sunset is quite stunning. So majestic.
After stopping to visit the Seine, we decided to make a little side-trip to Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île on the island, where I stayed during my first visit to Paris. Here’s to another 2.5km!
Can one even walk across the famous bridges of Paris without stopping to pay homage to the river that runs through it. Her majesty…
We had our meal at Closerie, but it was time for dessert! Where else but Amorino Saint Louis?! What else, but gelato?!
Amorino Saint Louis
Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île will always be one of my favourite places in Paris. When I stayed there in 2014, I loved to wake up early and get out into the tiny street and watch it come to life! Such simple magic!
Next! 750m to The Lady. Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. I mean, it was right there! We couldn’t NOT visit. I know it’s closed, but just to walk by it…
Our Lady of Paris…
This concluded our Day of the Dead. After another 3.8km of walking through the nighttime streets of Paris, we were back at our hotel. It was time to sleep, to recoup and prepare for our next day of conquering the streets of Paris one footstep at a time!
My step counter for this day showed 35,173 steps, or 27.6km. Just a stroll in the big scheme of things. How often do you get to wander around the streets of Paris seeking out dead things?!
Our Triangle of Death on the Day of the Dead. (And, yes, all the hearts are places we visited during our week in Paris. All the best places! And not a single taxi, metro, bicycle or uber!)
I’m also an author. One of my novels, a young adult story, is set on the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago. THE CAMINO CLUB. It follows six teens on their journey from Ponferrada to Santiago de Compostela. The teens walk with court appointed counselors in a juvenile delinquent program that will see them free of their records once they make the journey to Santiago…a clean slate. Think of a more diverse The Breakfast Club, but on the Camino de Santiago over two weeks instead of in a school library on a Saturday. Give it a look! It’s available wherever books are sold. Here’s the Amazon USA link.
KEVIN CRAIG 