France Travel Planner

• Montmartre: Striding a hill atop Paris, Montmartre used to be a village of artists, glorified by masters such as Utrillo, and painted, sketched, sculpted, and photographed by 10,000 lesser lights. Today, it’s overrun by tourists, building speculators, and nightclub entrepeneurs who moved in as the artists moved out. However, a few still linger and so does much of the villagelike charm. Of all the places for wandering the cobbled streets of old Paris, Montmartre, especially in its back streets and alleyways, gets our vote. The center point is the place duTertre, where you can head out on your journey of exploration. Gleaming through the trees from here is the Basilica of Scre-Coeur, built in an oddly Oriental neo-Byzantine style. Behind the church and clinging to the hillside below are steep and crooked little streets that seem – almost – to have survived the relentless march of progress. Rue des Saules still has Montmartre’s last vineyard. The rue Lepic still looks – almost – the way Renoir, the melancholic Van Gogh, and the dwarfish genius Toulouse-Lautrec saw it. (more…)

• Musee du Louvre (34-36 quai du Louvre): The Louvre’s exterior is a triumph of French architecture, and its interior shelters an embarrassment of art, one of the greatest treasure troves known to Western civilization. Of the Louvre’s more than 300,000 paintings, only a small percentage can be displayed at one time. The museum maintains its staid dignity and timelessness even though thousands of visitors traipse daily through its corridors, looking for the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo. I M Pei’s controversial Great Pyramid nearly offsets the grandeur of the Cour Carree, but it has a real functional purpose, as you will soon see.
• Musee d’Orsay (1 rue de Bellechasse): The spidery glass-and-iron canopies of an abandoned railway station frame one of Europe’s greatest museums of art. Devoted mainly to paintings of the 19th century, d’Orsay contains some of the most celebrated masterpieces of the French Impressionists, along with sculptures and decorative objects whose designs forever changed the way European artists interpreted line, movement, and color. In case you didn’t know, d’Orsay is also where Whistler’s Mother sits in her rocker.
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• Meeting the Natives: There is no page number which you can turn for guidance here. You’re on your own. But meeting Parisians, and experiencing their cynical metropolitanism, is one of the adventures of traveling to Paris – and it’s free. Tolerance, gentleness, and patience are not their strongest points; they don’t suffer fools gladly, but adore eccentrics. Visitors often find Parisians brusque to the point of rudeness and preoccupied with their own affairs. However this hard-boiled crust often protects a soft center. Compliment a surly bistro owner on her cuisine, and – 9 times out of 10 – she’ll melt before your eyes. Admire a Parisian’s dog or praise a window display, and you’ll find a loquaciously knowledgeable companion for the next 5 minutes. Ask about the correct pronuciation of a French word (before you mispronounce it), and a Parisian may become your language teacher. Try to meet a Parisian halfway with some kind of personalized contact. Only then do you learn their best qualities: their famed charm, their savoir-faire – and, yes believe it or not, the delightful courtesy that marks their social life.

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• Le Grand Vefour (17 rue de Beaujolais): Seductively and appropriately timeworn, this dining room is where Napoleon wooed Josephine. It’s Louis XVI-Directoire interior is a protected historic monument. With its haute cuisine, it has been the haunt of celebrities since 1760. Its cuisine, thankfully, is even better than ever, because it insists on hiring only the world’s leading chefs. This monument to the past still tantalizes 21st-century palates.
• Melac (42 rue Leon-Frot): When it was established in 1938, 2 years before France’s involvement in the war, Melac looked like something out of the 1880s, with a zinc bar that became famous. That bar is still there, and it’s one of the most time-honored old cafes in Paris. Naturally, you have to walk through the kitchen to get to the dining room to feast on such delights from the Auvergne as veal tripe “bundles” or pig’s liver.

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• The Five Hotel (5 rue Flatters): In the Left Bank’s Latin Quarter, this boutique hotel is installed in a 19th-century town house. Okay, the rooms may be a bit small, but the place is a charger, attracting fashionistas to its individually designed bedrooms in bold colors such as blood red. There’s Chinese lacquer galore.
• Hotel St-Jacques (35 rue des Ecoles): Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn who made “Charade” here, have long ago checked out, but this longtime favorite with its Belle Epogue atmosphere still has its allure. With furnishings that evoke France’s Second Empire, it’s the cliche of Left Bank charm. It’s well-furnished and attractive bedrooms have each been restored.
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• Hotel Ritz (15 place Vendome): This hotel, which gave the world the word “ritzy”, meaning posh, occupies a magnificent palace overlooking the octagonal borders of one of the most perfect squares in the world. The decor is pure opulence. Marcel Proust wrote parts of “Remembrance of Things Past” hee, and the world’s greatest chef, Georges-Auguste Escoffier, perfected many of his recipes in the Ritz kitchens.
• Four Seasons Hotel George V (31 Ave George V): Humorist Art Buchwalk once wrote, “Paris without the George V would be Cleveland”. The swanky address has long been a favorite of celebrities in every field, including Duke Ellington, who once wrote in his memoirs that his suite was so big that he couldn’t find the way out. It’s public and private rooms are decorate with a vast array of antiques and Louis XIV tapestries worth millions.
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• Whiling away an afternoon in a Parisian cafe: The cafes are where passionate meetings of writers, artists, philosophers, thinkers, and revolutionaries once took place -  and perhaps still do. Parisians stop by their favorite cafes to meet lovers and friends, to make new ones, or to sit in solitude with a newspaper or book.
• Taking afternoon tea a la Francaise: Drinking tea in London has its charm, but the Parisian salon de the is unique. Skip the cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches and delve into a luscious dessert such as the Mont Blanc, a creamy puree of sweetened chestnuts and meringue. The grandest Parisian tea salon is Angelina, 226 rue de Rivoli

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Discovering the City of Light, and making it your own has always been the most compelling reason to visit Paris. If you’re a first-timer, everything, of course will be new to you. If you’ve been away for awhile, expect changes: Taxi drivers may no longer correct your fractured French, but address you in English – tantamount to a revolution. More Parisians have a rudimentary knowledge of the language, and France, at least at first glance, seems less xenophobic than in past years. Paris, aware of its role within a unified Europe, is an international city. Parisians are attracted to foreign music, videos, and films, especially those from America, even though most French people vehemently disagree with the political dictates that have emerged from George Bush’s Washington.

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