We hear a lot about having too much of a good thing but what about too little? I had only allowed three days in Paris and it simply wasn’t enough to do and see everything so we decided to skip the very touristy things and just do fairly touristy stuff.
Did we queue for hours at the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa for 30 seconds (and it is by all accounts a surprisingly small painting)? Non! But we walked through the courtyard and looked at the long line.
Did we spend half a day to ascend to the only place in Paris where you can’t see the Eiffel Tower – and that would be actually in the tower? That’s another negative.
River cruise on the Seine? Nope. Climb up for the views from Sacré Cœur Basilica in Montmartre? Goodness, no! An evening at the Moulin Rouge? Not quite. Notre Dame? Still closed for renos when we were there. Consume overpriced coffee and croissants in noisy cafes? Of course! We are only human.
Instead of all the very touristiest of touristy options, we dined at one of the city’s famous Bouillon restaurants, ascended in a balloon, visited a cabaret show which is like the Crazy Horse or the Moulin Rouge but a bit more modern and arty, and took an open-top bus tour of Paris by night. Touristique? Moi?
First with fast food
Let’s start with the Bouillon restaurants. The one just down the road from our hotel, CitizenM Paris Opera, and recommended by the receptionist there, was the Chartier Grands Boulevarde. It looked like a nice art deco restaurant with a sizable queue, considering how early it was in the evening. We had no idea.
The concept of the Bouillon restaurants goes back to the late 19th century and grew into the Depression of the early 20th century when, they say, they invented fast food. Get in, eat a cheap nutritious meal and get out.
That still applies and the hustle and bustle, the crowded tables – the waiter has to pull yours out so you can sit next to the wall, then pushes it back in – all speak to the time when the restaurants’ motto, a proper meal for a modest sum, was forged.
We join the end of a queue of about 20 to 30 people in the entrance. You can’t book and there is a group of eight people at the front, hoping to get in. Dream on. The Maitre D’ walks down the line, asking groups if they are the right number to occupy the seats that have just been vacated.
He holds up his fingers. Three? Four? Two? The group of eight looks on balefully while we, who arrived long after they got here, are ushered through. The huge room and the gallery upstairs are buzzing. No one is looking at their phones – we are all in this moment.
As it says on their website, “Starters from €1, main courses starting at €7, ice creams and desserts from €2… A proper meal in Paris for less than €20, in good times or in bad – that’s the Bouillon Chartier commitment.”
The waiter takes your order and scribbles it on the tablecloth. Ours looks like Robert De Niro, appropriately enough, given that the Bouillons were and probably still are the haunts of struggling actors and artistes (is there any other kind?).
Now, to be fair, the food is not the best meal you will have in Paris but it could be the most fun. Being pescatarian, we had limited options, but the two students next to us hoed into their spaghetti bolognese with gusto, while other patrons seemed to favour the steak frite – steak and chips – which is your basic café meal in these parts.
This is not the kind of place where you are encouraged to linger over your food and drinks. Bouillons claim to have invented fast food, after all. As we leave, less than an hour after arriving, the queue has snaked out of one door onto the street and back in another.
It’s a cold winter night and a booth selling takeaway coffee and hot chocolate to the 50 or so waiting diners has opened up. The group of eight are still huddled at the front, discussing tactics like competitors on Survivor. Should they go in as two fours?
The Maitre D’ bustles past, two fingers raised like a peace sign. It’s going to be a long night if they are waiting for eight people all to leave at the same time.
Life is a cabaret
We wanted to see a genuine Parisian cabaret but didn’t want to get stuck on the tourist trail so the recommendation (again in the hotel) was The Paradis Latin.
This is the oldest cabaret in Paris and appropriately, since we were still notionally on the Wellington trail, it was founded by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. Located in the Latin Quarter, in the 5th Arrondissement , it was a trendy meeting place with clients like Dumas or Balzac, to name a few, according to this excellent guide to Paris cabarets..
It was destroyed by fire during the Franco-Prussian War but Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame rebuilt it for the Universal Exhibition of Paris of 1880. Apparently this the locals’ favorite cabaret – the couple next to us had been there eight times – and the aforementioned guide says that’s probably because of its high-class cabaret, decent dinner and affordable prices compared to other cabarets.
There was some great music and singing, top quality dancing, acrobatics, comedy and nudity, albeit very tastefully done. And yes, there was a can can (with a modern twist) but a little revolving tableau of sexual gymnastics made you wonder about any parents who accepted that the lower age limit for entry was 12. Some kids would get an education they or their folks may not have been expecting.
We had trouble booking online so we did it over the phone. Because we said it was a special occasion, they seated us right next to the stage which could be enthralling and alarming in equal parts. It’s not every day a topless woman comes sliding across the stage towards you, legs akimbo, and you are both wondering if she’s going to stop before she ends up in your lap.
Balloon ride going nowhere
This is probably the cheesiest of our outings in Paris and was just a little bit disappointing. When you look at the videos on the Ballon de Paris website, you might think that that this giant helium balloon, with its walkable deck, is floating across Paris. How could that possibly be?
The answer, of course, is that it isn’t going anywhere except up and down, anchored as it is to a huge winch in the Andre Citroen Park. However, it does almost match the height of the Eiffel Tower which is just a 30-minute stroll away along the banks of the Seine. You might say the views from the balloon are even better than the views from the tower – because they have the tower in them. And it’s a lot quicker and cheaper to get up and down.
Later we discovered that Stohrer the oldest patisserie in Paris was just five minutes away from our hotel, in the charming pedestrianised Rue Montorgueil. Apparently, this is where Rum Babas were invented but more importantly it was the first shop where all the various confectionery skills were brought under one roof. Well worth a visit as there are a couple of nice cafes in the street too.
Night moves
Our last night in Paris, not being sure what to do or where to go, we decided to do it all, as in, sit on the open top deck of a bus as it trawled through the streets of Paris and the commentary regaled us with information and history and a fine collection of corny jokes that wouldn’t have made it into a self-respecting Christmas bon-bon.
But we saw all the fancy shops, many of the historic sights , including Napoleon’s tomb (another Wellington box ticked), and ended up at the Eiffel Tower for a 20 minute photo op. It was actually a good way to get a sense of Paris at night – and certainly something you don’t get if you only travel on the Metro.
Speaking of which, earlier we had a trial run at finding the Chatelet Les Halles Metro station that would take us to the Airport in the morning. It turned out to be part of a huge underground Westfield shopping mall, with cinemas, fashion shops and fast food outlets. As for the station, directions to the many platforms would have been confusing in English, let alone our fractured French.
Unfortunately, we end up travelling in the morning rush-hour and our reconnaissance mission turned out to be a waste of time when we discovered that the escalators we had identified to take us and our luggage to the platforms were out of action.
And so after a jostling, shoulder-bumping, standing ride to Charles De Gaulle Airport we said goodbye to Paris and the rest of Europe, checking in painlessly for our Vietnam Airlines flight to Saigon where we had converted a 16-hour stop-over into a two-day layover. More on that next time.
