NYE: Paris. Suggestions?

October 11, 2009 2:25 PM

New Year's Eve in Paris. Suggestions?

A long-belated honeymoon will find me and my wife in Paris for New Year's this year. We've decided this is the perfect opportunity for a (relatively) expensive, multi-course feast in a great restaurant. Nothing too fancy (we're students) but we like food, and we want this to be an experience. It needs to be somewhere we can walk to (staying in Marais near the Picasso Museum on Rue Thorigny), and we will eventually end up at the champs elysees. Looking to spend no more than 130 euro a person, unless this is laughable for what we're asking.

posted by proj to Travel & Transportation around Paris, France (4 answers total)

You're not too far from the Centre Pompidou. I had a New Year's dinner there a few years ago at their rooftop restaurant - Georges.

It felt like a fantastic place to be that night. In the middle of our meals we heard fireworks and all the tables got up - champagne glasses in hand - to look out over the edge of the roof at fireworks exploding over Paris.
posted by vacapinta at 2:36 PM on October 11, 2009

I would caution against going to the Champs Elysees. So many people that there's nothing to actually see, and quite a lot of feral youths taking the opportunity to commit oodles of petty crime.
posted by idiomatika at 2:42 PM on October 11, 2009

If you're just looking though for a restaurant that serves great food and is near you then I recommend Le Pamphlet which is only a few blocks away.
posted by vacapinta at 2:56 PM on October 11, 2009

Chiming in late - I was in Paris for NYE in 2003/04, and had a great time just walking all over the city all night. The low point, however, was when we got to the Arc de Triomphe (at the top of the Champs Elysee) to find a wall of riot cops tear-gassing what seemed like an army of people raining dozens of glass bottles at the cops, leaving jagged glass everywhere.

Stay away from the Champs Elysee on NYE.
posted by Bobby Bittman at 8:56 PM on December 9, 2009