Paris--the 5th Arrondissement

Plan ahead. Your hotel or apartment should be for your convenience, not to appease a cheap budget.

Don’t Ask Me Where I Went

I’ll readily admit that most of my week in Paris, I had no idea where I was. The first three days, when walking to the writing workshop, I took different routes and was extremely confused by day four. All the buildings look the same, and it took another day before I had the creperie, boulengerie, and other landmarks memorized.

My daughter joined me for this trip, and she was a fantastic guide to all things Paris. It has been one of her favorite places for years, and it showed. We found some off-the-beaten-path spots for unique food, and I got to see all the typical tourist places, but not in the usual way. We never had to deal with a line or wait for a reservation. The prices were reasonable, and the food was excellent.

Daughters are cool. If you don’t have one for your Paris trip, you should rent one. It will be worth it.

Our Apartment in the Quartier Latin

We stayed near the Jardin du Luxembourg at 43 Boulevard Saint-Michel. On the border between the 5th and 6th Arrondissements in the Latin Quarter, I found this one-bedroom apartment on Vrbo, very near the Sorbonne. The goal of this apartment was to be as close as possible to the restaurant where The Blue Hour was conducted at Le Hibou, in the 6th. If you decide to consider this apartment, just know that the photos are much better than reality.

While the stairs below were from a restaurant, remember (for the US folks) that in European apartment buildings, the ground floor is level 0, not 1. Since I live in Türkiye much of the year, I never think about this. If the apartment is on the second floor, you have three flights of stairs, not two. All of us who travel know this by now and know that if you pack more than a carry-on and a backpack, you’ve lost your mind. But you do you. Or, do as I did, and bring your daughter as your pack mule. That works as well.

The location was excellent, even though the apartment had a few downsides. It was a twenty-minute walk to anything I wanted to see and a five-minute walk to the workshop every day. When I booked it, I only hoped my daughter could come, but I still booked something large enough for the two of us and definitely larger than a single hotel room. (It’s like the baseball field—if you build/book it, they will come, and my strategy worked.)

When I travel, I want to stay in neighborhoods when possible, not in a chain hotel. Traveling with my husband, this isn’t possible most of the time. So when I’m alone, I like to find a boutique hotel or an apartment, depending on my budget. And that’s the point. Set your budget, then look at every possibility for your stay where you are going. If you are so limited by your budget, please wait until next month or next year, until you can stay where you really want and relax. Yes, there are cheap places to stay, but sleeping somewhere that makes you nervous, uncomfortable, or unsafe ruins the entire trip.

In our apartment, while some of the design and furniture choices could have been better, we had an upgraded bathroom with HOT water (an absolute requirement for me). The bed was very comfortable, and the kitchen was large enough for breakfast and coffee. The best thing? The seven-foot glass doors opened directly to the street. At three floors up, we were at an ideal height to see and hear the city around us without being disturbed. In the spring in Paris, this is fabulous.

The bus system in Paris worked well for us. I try to use my feet as much as possible, but because I took this trip before surgery, I had much less energy than normal, and by 15,000 steps a day, I was exhausted. Getting on the back of a bus and simply watching out the window at the end of each day was very helpful.

The subways in Paris are very cool, but most of the time there are no elevators (Remember the stairs and luggage discussion above? Please consider these stairs as well when traveling). I decided to take an Uber back to the airport, given the number of stairs I would have to navigate and my lack of energy. Every one of our subway trips was packed like sardines, so we shifted to buses. Besides, I was in Paris to see Paris, not just to get from place to place.

While I had been to Paris twenty years prior, I had never been to Montmartre. This was the first neighborhood we explored at my request. The thing about Montmartre is that every other tourist has the same idea as you and wants to see it, too. Expect it to be crowded in the spring.

Lunch was on a whim and turned out to be wonderful Mediterranean food with a cat next door. The entire neighborhood knew this cat. People in nearby shops stopped, talked to or petted the cat, and of course, I had to take photos.

And then we walked.

Computer-type symbols are all over Paris, like the one I captured here. I was fascinated with the architecture. 200 photos later, I admit I was a bit too fascinated.

My daughter had never had snails. I ordered them for her and the waiter, seeing how difficult it was for my hands to deal with the tools, instructed her on how to eat them.

Imagine having one of these rooftop apartments. It’s my favorite thing in each city—imagining what it would be like to live there.

Word of caution: Skip the tourist restaurants. We had lunch at Riviera Fuga. While it was on the river (and we are water people), the food was uninteresting and the prices ridiculous, given the other terrific meals we had eaten. Stop here and have a drink instead. Your wallet will thank you.

The only other true tourist destination that was on my daughter’s list was Bacha Coffee on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

We had an afternoon coffee service to go with our everyday pastry habit. We were each brought a POT of coffee chosen from a thick menu below. There were so many choices, as a coffee addict, that I had to have a real conversation with this waiter. In the end, I let him pick, and I greatly enjoyed what he brought.

My daughter, on the other hand, was up most of the night. Be careful when you rent-a-daughter; make sure you get one who tolerates caffeine.

Afternoons of wandering, tasting new foods, and enjoying some of the best pastries in the world. Isn’t that what Paris is about?