Half the fun of taking a trip to France is planning the things to do in Paris. Between museums, dining out, strolls in world-famous gardens, and just hanging out in cafes, there are enough activities to enjoy a different kind of experience on each day of your trip. Still, a visit to the capital’s most famous landmark is always a must. In addition to marveling at the structure from the surrounding Champs de Mars, you can have a meal inside the Eiffel Tower restaurant. For special outings such as that, make sure to book in advance, as there are plenty of others who would love to secure a seat.

Another can’t-miss is a visit to the Louvre. But there are smaller museums that offer a more bite-size piece of French art and history. The Musee Nissim de Camondo is one of many museums operated by the umbrella group that runs the Louvre. But this spot, located on the edge of the tony Parc Monceau in the 8th arrondissement, is an hotel particulier, or private mansion, bequeathed to France by the Camondo family. The home is decorated as it was before World War II, packed with 18th century art and furniture treasures. Part of the joy of a visit to this museum is seeing how a wealthy, cultivated family spent their days. Viewing the family kitchen and even the bathrooms offers an eye-opening perspective on pre-war life in the French capital.

Au Nom de la Rose specializes in everything roses. When I pass by the shop, there are always the most vividly colored bouquets and arrangements spilling on to the street. They make smart arrangements in mini- watering cans and do an adorable one with either a single, double, or triple rose configuration in a tiny tin pail. I always buy them as gifts for dinner parties, so the hostess/host doesn’t have to fuss finding a vase to fill with water. When you purchase something, they ask you if it’s for a gift, and if it is they will put in in a shopping bag, and fill the top with rose petals and staple a single rose to the side of it.

Not only do they have a spectacular selection of roses, they also offer a product line of other rose products, including jam, lollipops, chocolates with crystalized roses, perfume, candles, room spray, and rose-flavored syrup.

87 rue Saint Antoine, 75004

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2 Paris flat available for rent. 2 month minimum, no maximum. Rent includes all utilities as well as high-speed wifi, cable TV with English channels, and phone calls to most foreign countries.

This 1-bedroom flat is on rue Voltaire in the 11th arrondissement. It has a full bed and a pull-out sofabed. Rent is 1300 euros per month.

Click here for more pix and a list of amenities.

This flat is on a cobblestone square overlooking one of the famous staircases of Montmartre. It is on rue Nobel in the 18th arrondissement, just behind Sacre Coaur. Nearest metro is Lamarck Caulaincourt. Rent is 1200 euros per month.

Click here for more pix and a list of amenities.

Boldly placed just steps away from the well-established Experimental Cocktail Club, Jefrey’s touts itself as a speakeasy-type gentlemen’s club. The interior looks promising: dim and sexy, small and intimate with deep purple velour sofas, comfortable arm chairs and elegant touches like the vintage seltzer bottles and cut-glass decanters. However, it does seem to be a gentlemen’s club that wants no fatties at the bar as the bar chairs are the tightest I’ve ever squeezed my bum into. An inch more ass and I would have needed the assistance of the pretty hostess plus a barman or two to pry it out of my butt.

The menu features a selection of cocktails in the mid-teens price range, including standards like the obligatory cosmo and house creations that feature a lot of fresh fruit and flavored syrups. Some are divided into ‘for him’ and those ‘for her.’ My martini was competently made, yet slightly warm, and came with simple savory cracker bites. I followed up with a margarita, which if memory serves, was nice enough. The spirits selection is somewhat small but with a few nice choices. While I take issue with the vodka-heavy selection, I have no real gripe with the way the drinks are made.

14 rue St. Sauveur, 75002

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One Parisian friend goes to London to get his hair done. Another goes for the clubs, claming Paris boites are lame. Whatever your reason, Eurostar trips from Paris to London are a mere €79 round trip through March. At today’s exchange rate, that’s about $100 US. Thanks to Rue Rude for the tip!

Pamela from Frogblog discovered a welcome jolt of color in the gray city of Paris recently, when out with a French friend:

We stop short, drawn like magpies to a shop window bursting with bright cheery girliness in the form of funky, colorful leather clogs, bags and other goodies. I’m so starved for color in Paris, displays like this one make my dopamine or endorphins or serotonin or all of the above spike big time.

So of course we go in. Parisians tend to turn up their noses at clogs, BTW. Their loss. But Claire is not one of those Parisians. I’ve never stopped wearing clogs since the 70s, and Claire and I are from the same generation, so we enjoyed sharing the blast-from-the-past moment. She likes dainty florals à la Liberty of London, while I like loud 70s kitsch and the retro-collagey thing, all of which, as you see, they do.
The objects themselves were delightful, but the story gets even better. You see, they’re handmade by real, live French craftsmen! The shop, which only opened in Paris three months ago, is run by the soft-spoken young Benjamin Renoux, who is learning the leather/cobbler trade from his father. They have two other shops, in Honfleur and Saint-Malo (both big tourist destinations). Lucky for you, Cuir du Voyageur also sells its delicious products through its website.

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A lot of what foreigners think of as Parisian stylishness looks a great deal like conformism. When I first moved here, I thought the other mothers at my children’s school were wearing a uniform. They weren’t, not exactly; but they did all have the same coat. All the children also wore the same coat. If anything was different about it, it stayed the same color: navy blue or black.

Last winter, all the students in my bourgeois neighborhood were wearing this doudoune, from the French company Moncler [pronounced mon clair]. It costs only three or four hundred euros…

This year, Moncler is selling the jackets at a deep discount. Why? Because this winter, the thing to have in Paris, which is having a remarkably warm winter by the way, is a Canada Goose, created, according to the company’s website, for postwar bush pilots in the Arctic. But in black, of course.

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How cute is this? A fellow named Michael contacted me to show me this Paris Metro Hangman game. Curious how he programmed it? Here’s how.

I’ve been to an awful lot of Paris restaurants this year, some new, others just new to me. Here are a few of my favorites.

Among new openings, Septime made a big impact on me and on Paris (I made a second reservation before my first visit was over). This new address in the 11th arrondissement, part of the Passardien diaspora (chef Bertrand Grébaut, along with several other noteworthy young talents, worked under Alain Passard at L’Arpège), is, for me, the most satisfying embodiment of what’s happening in Paris now. There are beautiful ingredients and a seamless incorporation of both ultramodern and classic technique that all ends up feeling perfectly natural. Unpretentious, professional service doesn’t hurt.

My other favorite newcomer is Vivant, Pierre Jancou’s latest showcase for his lusty, unfussy cooking of assiduously sourced products and his collection of expressive natural wines. Vivant stands out for another reason: Every contemporary bistro that opened this year seemed to be outfitted with exposed brick and industrial lighting—a cool, if bland, any-city aesthetic—but Jancou sources his locations as carefully as his products, and this onetime bird shop, elaborately tiled in glowing green and yellow, is gorgeous.

There are two old-but-new-to-me addresses that stand out from the past year. First, Chez Casimir, the delightful sibling and neighbor to Chez Michel, with a bustling, old-fashioned room; the happy, mostly neighborhood crowd; and, above all, the generous, blissfully unaffected, seasonal bistro cooking. And there’s the cheese tray. All comes with a price that feels almost retro.

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“Noise is to sound what weeds are to flowers,” said Des from the Soundlandscapes blog when we were working together on a project earlier this year. I had made the mistake of saying that we needed to record some ‘noises’ rather than ‘sounds,’ and he quickly put me in my place.

However, as we began recording the sounds of the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale, it soon became evident that noise was in the air, too. The périphérique motorway was in earshot, and its dull constant rumble was polluting the natural rustles and chirps of the garden.

The delicate distinction between a noise and a sound once again popped its head up recently with the launch of a new website in Paris. Offering live updates on noise levels in the capital through a series of brightly colored maps and charts, it’s almost like a child’s game, though the subject itself is serious. “Noise is a very significant source of annoyance in Ile-de-France (the Paris region) due to the high concentration of housing and the exceptional density of transportation infrastructures,” the homepage reads. “Among disturbances of quality of life,” it continues, “noise is the first nuisance mentioned.”

The website was created by Bruitparif, a nonprofit organization which aims to fight noise pollution. Two kinds of maps can be found on the site: A static map, which paints the historic noise hotspots across the city (the darker the color, the higher the decibels), and a series of live charts from active captors in experimental zones (for example, next to motorways and train lines, and more interestingly, near the bars of the Rue Amelot).
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