Two weeks in Paris. Please tell me your off the beaten path favorite places
August 27, 2010 1:50 PM   Subscribe

Two weeks in Paris. Please tell me your favorite off the beaten path places
posted by citybuddha to Travel & Transportation around Paris, France (24 answers total) 35 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not that I lurk around MeFi favoriting threads about secret wonderful things to do in Paris or anything, but: Previously.
posted by so_gracefully at 2:08 PM on August 27, 2010 [1 favorite]


Oh wow, so many things. When are you going?

English Language Cinemas is Paris
Paris' Best Cinemas

If you can, I recommend "Walks through lost Paris" for historical walks around the city. It is great for just understanding that the Paris we see today is a fairly new construction.

I just love spending time in the Paris parks, especially Montsouris
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 2:09 PM on August 27, 2010


Not exactly off the beaten path, but I recommend Gerard Mulot bakery:

http://www.gerard-mulot.com/

We went to the one in St. Germain several times. Everything - everything - we had there was good. The website makes it look like they only have high end stuff, but they carry everything from simple bread and croissants to crazy-elaborate cakes.

The museum of the Middle Ages was excellent and worth a visit:

http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/

I was there for a couple weeks a few months ago, and loved just about everywhere we went in the city. Enjoy.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 2:22 PM on August 27, 2010


Mulot is wonderful, his Ste Germain spot is close to Pierre Herme's as well.

We have both visited Mulot and Patrick Roger through Meet the French. Stupid name but small group english tours of various Parisian establishments. Believe me you will eat more than 10-15 euros worth of macaron and chocolate.

The Musee de la Chasse (Hunting Museum) is pretty crazy - taxidermy, hundreds of weapons and bizarro art.
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 2:52 PM on August 27, 2010


The book and site An hour from Paris, has lots of lovely ideas and info.

Also Invisible Paris has loads of interesting things. But don't overload, wander, get lost, there's always a metro...
posted by bwonder2 at 2:55 PM on August 27, 2010


I love the Mosquee de Paris, a really large and gorgeous mosque which serves lovely mint tea. The tea room used to be a big hangout for models working in Paris, too, meaning it came with a view of stunningly beautiful, if painfully thin, women.

Also, just in case you don't know about it, don't miss the Berthillon ice cream shop on Ile St. Louis. Yum.
posted by bearwife at 3:05 PM on August 27, 2010


L'as du Fallafel in the Marais! Read about it here, and here.

Not really off the beaten path but it's super amazing.
posted by hapax_legomenon at 3:19 PM on August 27, 2010


La Défense -- financial district on the outskirts of Paris with larger-than-life public art all over the place.
posted by jejune at 3:20 PM on August 27, 2010


L'as du Fallafel in the Marais!

Hell yes.

Also La Sainte Chappelle; it's hidden inside the Palais de Justice, so it gets way less tourist traffic than you'd expect.
posted by asterix at 3:29 PM on August 27, 2010


Musee du moyen age is lovely.

Not off the beaten path, but the Musee Rodin is one of my favorite places in the entire world to spend an afternoon. http://www.musee-rodin.fr/

I loved wandering the residential areas near the Eiffel Tower. Great photos to be had there.
posted by littleflowers at 3:37 PM on August 27, 2010


It's Paris. Bring a camera, walk around, be a Flanêur. You're bound to find something interesting.

You can try chasing ghosts. The book, "The Parisians" is well written, although you'll find that a lot of the places were destroyed in the 1800's.


http://www.amazon.com/Parisians-Adventure-History-Graham-Robb/dp/0393067246


I got the audio book. The narrator has this somewhat Englishy bompish voice that instantly makes me want to go to sleep. But I like it, when I'm like, painting walls.
posted by alex_skazat at 4:04 PM on August 27, 2010


Seconding Berthillon, L'as du Fallafel, La Ste Chappelle, and the Musee du Moyen age. Adding les Catacombes.
posted by johnvaljohn at 4:05 PM on August 27, 2010


Hmmm...les Catacombes was supposed to be a link...
posted by johnvaljohn at 4:06 PM on August 27, 2010


Third and Fourthing the Musee de Moyen. The gardens on one side are shockingly lovely.

Another book suggestion: Quiet Corners of Paris. Focuses primarily on outdoor locations and there are some true gems. I am a big fan of the The Little Bookroom guidebooks in general, they have lead me to some wonderful discoveries.

One corner off the top of my head? The Park behind Sacré-Coeur. On my last visit I took a friend who has relatives in Paris and spends several weeks a year there. He had no idea the park existed.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 5:21 PM on August 27, 2010


The last time I was in Paris, I spent a day wandering around the 10th arrondissement because of this film. I'd never explored that area before and found it interesting to walk around. I like train stations so I wanted to see the Gare de l'Est and the Gare du Nord. I also liked walking around by the canal.

The Passage Brady was also kind of neat to see. There's a cinema near there that's actually featured in the beginning of the film -- and they were showing that film on the day I was there, so I had to go see it. Really awesome day.
posted by Put the kettle on at 6:00 PM on August 27, 2010


You might like to look at the blog: parisbreakfast

She has lots of ideas and photos that might interest folks going to Paris, especially if they like dessert!
posted by Leah at 6:46 PM on August 27, 2010


If you have any kind of serious interest in the history of musical instruments, Western and non-Western, a journey to northeast part of Paris to visit the historic instrument collection at La Cité de la Musique is well worth the time spent. If you're an early music freak it is non-negotiable (although their collection basically starts with the late Renaissance).
posted by Creosote at 7:24 PM on August 27, 2010


And if you're at the Cité de la Musique, might as well have a wander round the Parc de la Villette, which is large, crazy, full of weird and interesting things (the Cité being one of them), always packed, and proportionately little-visited by tourists.

This would make an easy combined stroll with the Bassin de la Villette--you could even walk up the Canal St Martin from much closer to the centre of town--and the Buttes Chaumont, which rightly got mentioned very early on in that last thread. Something that didn't get mentioned, however, is a gorgeous semi-hidden area of small terraced houses with lush gardens, the quartier de Mouzaïa. It's much more interesting than it looks on that map, obviously, being made up of loads of pedestrian alleyways (villas) that are too narrow for cars, and it would also fit nicely into that walk. In fact here's a link (in French) to a suggested walk from La Villette to Mouzaïa that has some photos.

Over in the 17th there's the Cité des Fleurs, which is a much grander residential street with big houses and gardens that's closed to (non-residents') cars, but that's a single street rather than a whole hidden quarter of them. More interesting, in that part of town, if you're looking for off the beaten (tourist) path places, is the Parc Clichy-Batignolles, a new park constructed in the last few years over what was once a large area of railway sidings. I really like it--it has something of the feel of the Promenade plantée (or Coulée verte), which was mentioned in that last thread and is great, only widened out a bit. I'm sure it's looking even better now, after two or three more years of 'growing in', than it was last time I was there, when some of it had been planted for only a year or so, and it's probably got a bit bigger too. By itself it's reason to be grateful that Paris didn't get the 2012 Olympics--otherwise, this area was slated to be part of the Olympic developments, and would have been much less interesting.

Riding on the lines 2 and 6 of the Metro (which between them form a ring around the inner 10 arrondissements) is fun, too: these are the lines which have quite extensive overhead sections, a good (and cheap!) way to see stuff.

If grands projets are your thing, they don't come much grander than the new (1990s) Bibliothèque nationale in the 13th. The library tends to divide opinion (grotesquely overblown, wasteful and impractical/an honour to the nation in its grandeur and ambition)--definitely worth seeing for yourself, and maybe reading the bit about it near the end of 'Austerlitz' by WG Sebald. There are usually good exhibitions in the public parts of the library, too.

To get to or from the BNF you might want to walk via the parc de Bercy and the new Simone de Beauvoir footbridge. The western end of the park is not very interesting, since it's mostly grassed areas for people to play football on--and fair enough; there aren't many other parks nearby--but the central and (separate) eastern sections are lovely. This belongs to the same 'generation' of 1980s park creation that also brought us the Promenade plantée, and it makes you realize that there were some good things about the 80s.

Oh, and in the 5th, I don't much like the Institut du Monde Arabe* (though it too has some good exhibitions) but I love the fact that you can walk into it and ride the lifts up to the roof terrace for a great view. I also have some issues with the idea of locating the national immigration museum in the former main pavillion of the 1931 Colonial Exposition at Vincennes**, but the museum itself is decent and the building has an incredible bas-relief carving around its outside showing the colonies delivering up the fruits of the earth to the mother country.

I've started putting in footnotes, so it's obviously time for me to stop. Enjoy your trip!

*Partly because I'm not a grands projets kind of person, and partly because the ceilings inside are inexcusably low and I'm 6'3"--I find it very oppressive. Great place to take pictures, though, especially in the lift/stairs.

**For example: the single largest source of immigration into France, historically, has been Portugal, not one of the former colonies; Belgium, Spain, and Poland are all biggies too. So it's questionable to link immigration so firmly to colonialism--though the museum's actual displays are aware of this. Ahem. Sorry. It's my job.

posted by lapsangsouchong at 1:11 AM on August 28, 2010 [4 favorites]


Parc des Buttes Chaumont
posted by vizsla at 1:24 AM on August 28, 2010


Oh, and how could I have forgotten, for off the beaten path: the Arènes de Lutèce, a Roman ampitheatre. It's quite close to major touristy sites like the Panthéon, but you will see far fewer tourists there than local kids playing football and residents taking a break to sit on the benches and chat. It's nowhere near as physically impressive as larger Roman sites like the ruins in Lyon, but its neighborhood feel gave me a profound sense of the continuity of Paris as a city for the last two millennia (though the arena itself was buried for centuries).
posted by Creosote at 5:58 AM on August 28, 2010


When I went to Musée Baccarat in the 16th, (11 Place des Etats-Unis,) I pretty much had the place to myself. If you like looking at fine crystal, do go. (And the bathroom is not to be missed.)
posted by of strange foe at 3:26 PM on August 28, 2010


lapsangsouchong's mentions almost all of the places I was going to recommend:
Institut du Monde Arabe, Coulee Verte, Butte Chaumont.

In addition, if you are a science person, you should visit the Musee des Arts et Metiers. It is a science museum for non-children, for scientists. Absolutely beautiful artifacts, lovely explanations, and they currently have a video game retrospective with lots and lots of things to play on, from the original pong (1975 rotating dials to control paddles) to kami and some even newer things on all kinds of platforms.

Another calm green place you might look for is the, oh I'll get the name wrong, Place cluny? Place thermes de cluny? It borders on Blvd St Michel on the west side of the street, near the Musee des Moyens Ages, and has an absolutely beautiful and aromatic selection of flowers, herbs, and medicinal plants.

Saint Chapelle I heartily second not only for the shorter lines relative to Notre Dame but because of the beautiful stained glass. ND is beautiful from the OUTSIDE, Saint Chapelle should be seen from the INSIDE.

If you want a walking or dinner companion some evening, or a translating minion, feel free to get in touch. I live here.
posted by whatzit at 8:22 AM on August 29, 2010


One more vote for Berthillon, Ste Chappelle, and the Musee du Moyen age. But there are many other wonderful museums that don't seem to get much attention: Musée Guimet for Asian art, Musée Jacquemart-André - and my latest favorite, La Cité de l'architecture & du patrimoine. I spent many happy hours there.

And then there's the small Statue of Liberty.
posted by jeri at 12:57 AM on August 30, 2010


But there are many other wonderful museums that don't seem to get much attention...

Indeed, and for this you should buy yourself one of the Paris Museum passes. You pay once, cut all the lines, and then go to your choice: a lot of the big-name museums as well as some great lesser knowns and odd ducks. If you go to about 3 things a day (not all are museums - this includes Arc de Triomphe and some other stuff), it's been worth it. Besides the above, I advocate getting one so you can say "what the hay, I am just 5 minutes from the Musee des Fumeurs or 10 from the Musee de la Vie Romantique..." and go, instead of thinking "man, ANOTHER ten euro? screw that shit."
posted by whatzit at 10:18 AM on August 30, 2010


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