A month in Paris.
We were a bit nervous coming to Paris. As mentioned on my last monthly summary, we had been loving France over the two months leading to Paris. Would Paris change that? We’d heard all kinds of comments of Parisians being rude and the city being overrated and dirty. How about all those pickpockets and the hordes of tourists?
I’m going to write a lot more about Paris in upcoming posts. But I’ll give you some quick thoughts here:
- The Parisians. We love the Parisians. We had zero issues with them, we found them friendly and charming and I find it precious to hear foreigners calling them “dicks”. They’re not, not if you follow some basic rules. The most important of those is being polite: say “Bonjour” or “Bonsoir”, don’t block the sidewalk while looking your map, don’t barge into a store and immediately start talking to the person in English (we saw this too many times. How would New Yorkers like it if you walked into a store there with an imperialistic attitude and immediately started addressing the staff in French?). The biggest thing we noticed during our 3 months in France is that the French value manners, politeness and protocol. When we flew out of Paris Lissette said it: “I think the French are one of my favorite people!”. Lissette is coloured and her French isn’t great, but I can’t tell you how many great interactions she/we had with locals during the last 3 months (including in Paris). Our experience totally shattered our preconceptions of Parisians.
We saw a bit of everything in Paris; beauty, lots of tourists doing the weird things tourists do, and some hidden gems that most people miss. Lissette has an eye for the odd and for capturing beauty from a different perspective. I’m going to include a few examples of it all in this post (I’ll have a post dedicated to images of Paris in the next little while).
- Paris is dirty. There are some shitty parts of Paris and we stayed in one of the worst of them: the 10th . As far as central Paris goes, it’s probably the worst (more on that below). We explored 13 of Paris’s 20 arrondissements and I’ll be writing about them in depth in the next little while. I would put the 5th and 6th arrondissements at the top of the list of “Where to stay in Paris for the first-timer”. I’ll have a post on that coming up at some point. Overall though, Paris is clean: just remember this is a city and that “Emily in Paris” shouldn’t be how you imagine the city.
- Overrated? There were many things that impressed us in Paris but few highlights actually blew our socks off. We’ve seen nicer Cathedrals than Notre-Dame, the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur is surprisingly kind of boring, the Arc de Triumphe is impressive in size but is it really beautiful? Paris has a beautiful bridge (Pont Alexandre III) but it doesn’t compare to bridges we’ve seen in other places (like Prague or Budapest). Montmartre is packed with tourists and is overrated. Despite it all, we don’t Paris itself overrated, the incredible thing about the city is that there’s just so much. It’s not just about a couple of highlights. There is, for example, a museum for every genre and you could spend a month visiting nothing but museums. There are many beautiful churches (aside from famous Notre-Dame or Sacré-Cœur) that were built from the 11th to 14th centuries that are magnificent (and free!) that few tourists visit. There is so much history and depth to Paris that even with a month we feel we only scratched the surface. I have a feeling that Paris is a place that will keep bringing us back.
- Overly touristed? Definitely. And it feels like young Americans are about 60% of them, it just astounded us hearing American accents everywhere we went. Why? Paris is an expensive destination and let’s face it, Americans are rich compared to most around the world. It’s also the image that Paris/France has in America as the cultural capital of the world. It just feels like every other tourist in France is American, something we haven’t previously seen in other (perhaps less popular) parts of Europe.
- Pickpockets and scammers. A lot is made about pickpockets and scammers. You DO have to watch out but it is nowhere as bad as social media makes you want to believe. The ones to watch out for? The Roma (gypsies). You’ll see them around the Louvre with their signup sheets or their tuk-tuks. Avoid them. We saw a few getting tossed out of the Louvre area by security guards for pickpocketing and a few minutes later they were back trolling the streets.
- Getting around. The metro is mostly very good and very safe. We used it to get all around the city. Try to avoid rush hours when it can get very full. And again, you’ll see posts on social media telling you so much about the best passes etc for Paris that it gets confusing. It’s not. When you arrive, go to either a machine (as we did) or a teller. Buy a Navigo pass (2 Euros for the blank card) and load it up with tickets (2.55 per ticket). We got 2 passes and loaded them up with 10 tickets each when we initially arrived. Then whenever you need to take the metro, just pass through the turnstiles or in some case (when there are no turnstiles) validate at the validation machines they have next to entrances to the different metro lines. It’s not complicated and you’ll get the hang of it soon (and all machines have multi-language options).
- Weather. The weather in June was crazy. The first 2 weeks we cold and rainy, the last 2 weeks we had a horrible heat wave with temperature around 40C (around 100F). Being in any big city is difficult when it’s hot.
As I say, I’ll be writing more on Paris – the good and the bad – in more detail in the next little while.
Next up: the cost of a month in Paris.
The Cost of a Month in Paris
Our month in Paris was actually the cheapest of our 3 months in France. You might find that surprising (Paris is known to be pricy) but the reason is simple: we had a booking for a month on Airbnb (you can find good value on 1 month stays) and we didn’t travel outside Paris during the month (as previously mentioned, the cost of transport in France quite high).
We stayed in this apartment in the 10th arrondissement. The apartment was fine and very good value for Paris (2,000 Euros for a month)…but I would not recommend staying in the 10th to a bunch of 50 year olds like us. Maybe if you’re young and you’re slumming it. Having said that, if I had a child who told me that they were going to stay in the 10th I would have to stage an intervention.
Let me say right off the bat that the 10th isn’t all horrible. The streets on either edge of the Arrondissement are ok (example; Rue de Faubourg Poissoniere and the area closer to Canal Saint-Martin). But the center of the arrondissement is very gritty: we lived on Boulevard de Strasbourg and there were always homeless people lying on the street, the garbage cans are overflowing, all the stores are low-end. It is very dirty and grimy and you might think yourself in the 3rd world. Lissette comes from the Bronx. For her this was worse than the Bronx.
We didn’t see that level of decrepitness in any other arrondissement that we visited.
Despite the above, in the day the 10th is a dynamic area. Our building had many businesses. There are many restaurants in the area catering to the lunch time crowd including some of the best Thai food we’ve ever had (Manee). There are Vietnamese restaurants, Kurd restaurants, a whole section of Indian restaurants.
As I say, it is fine in the day. At night it is a different animal.
Long story short, we didn’t know how the neighbourhood was like before booking a month’s stay. I’m just being honest and if you’re considering the 10th I’d weigh the pros and cons.
Long Distance Travel
The 202 Euros was the cost of the TGV from Lyon to Paris (ie 101 Euros each. The journey takes about 2 hours).
Short-distance travel
The 128 Euros was the cost of local transport in Paris, that being the metro. As I say, the initial cost of a Navigo card is 2 Euros and every journey added to the card costs 2.55 Euros. We found the metro very good and I don’t think we ever waited more than 5 minutes for a metro to come.
Restaurants and cafés
I’ve mentioned when writing about Avignon our favorite French Bistro. In Paris we only had one meal in a typical French restaurant (a restaurant called Loulou in the 7th arrondissement which cost 75 Euros). Honestly most of our restaurant outings were to Manee restaurant (the fabulous Thai restaurant I mentioned above). A meal for 2 would come out to about 25 Euros and we came here several times a week. Other than that we had Indian several times (Old Shalimar being the best. Cost 35 Euros between the 2 of us). We also had Brunch once at Holybelly which was touristy and expensive for what it was (45 Euros for 2 of us). Other than that, we bought a lot of pastries and baguettes at Boulangerie La Parissienne which was very good. We were bad in Paris (and France in general) and have to go on a diet on the next leg of the race.
Groceries
I’ve previously mentioned that we’ve found the cost of groceries expensive in France (about 65% more expensive than Spain by my calculation). At 893 Euros for the month, our grocery bill in Paris actually came out a bit lower than during our 2 previous months in France (1,022 Euros and 1,273 Euros). That’s mostly because we had a nice local fruterie next door where we bought vegetables and fruits for less than in supermarkets.
Tourist Sites
One thing that’s great in France is that religious buildings are FREE to visit. So you can visit Notre-Dame, Sacré-Cœur and tons of other gorgeous religious buildings for no cost. That doesn’t happen in many other countries (when we lived in Spain we’d usually have to pay anywhere from 6 to 15 Euros to visit a cathedral, church or basilica).
There are also lots of paying sites in Paris. We paid for two: the Louvre (22 Euros each) and the Palais Garnier (15 Euros each)*.
*Note: that is EU residency pricing which we took advantage of. Rates for non-EU residents/citizens are significantly more (32 Euros for the Louvre, 25 Euros for Palais Garnier). We never had to provide proof of residency in case you’re wondering…
As I say, overall our costs in Paris were less than over the last two months travelling around France.
The Month ahead
We’re honestly sad to be leaving France.
The next 3 months will be spent in the UK, with 3 months stays in Edinburgh, York and London. We’ve never been to the UK and have always been curious. The goal was also to escape the worst of summer – after 5 years in Spain we just needed a break from hot temperatures.
Time is flying by. We’re entering the 6th month of full-time travelling. It seemed such a short time ago (February 1st) that we left Granada to get back to full-time travel. I’ll have some thoughts on that in next month’s summary.
Related: 10 Things to Do in Avignon (Provence, France)
Related: Can you Visit Nîmes on a day trip?
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