Le Chic En Rose

I’m finally getting around to writing up our two week trip to France in May last year. I’m reversing the order as we went to the UK first – I’ll do some posts about that part of trip later.

In general, I’ll be trying to focus on places that I haven’t visited or written about before. However, I can’t bypass the start of our French holiday in Paris. We had a couple of nights en route there before heading down to Lyon to join friends for a week-long river cruise and a few days of independent travel.

As our preferred form of transport, we took the Eurostar train from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord followed by a taxi ride to our accommodation in the 6th arrondissement. Just a word of caution, always head straight to the official taxi rank when exiting the Gare du Nord as there are plenty of scams involving unofficial taxi or Uber drivers who mill about the exits hassling travellers for custom. Taking up one of their offers can lead to fleecing unsuspecting tourists of money e.g. driving out of their way instead of directly to the correct address. It does help to keep your wits and your luggage about you!

We had booked a couple of nights at the Citadines Saint-Germain-des-Prés Paris on The Quai de Grands Augustins on the left bank of the River Seine. The details are here – I’m not being sponsored by Booking.com or anything! We first discovered this hotel apartment 20 years ago during a bitterly cold snap in January 2004 when we were visiting Paris with our daughters. It’s the perfect spot for a city break being a few minutes walk from St Michel Metro, Notre Dame and the trendy 5th and 6th arrondissements. There is a traditional French feel about the Citadines here in Paris (it’s part of a chain of similar hotels). If you like very modern state of the art hotel rooms, this wouldn’t be the place for you but it’s very comfortable, tastefully decorated and with good amenities. You can self cater or use the residents cafe for breakfast (which we did each day). There are also plenty of cafes and restaurants in the vicinity, so you don’t need to wander too far to find a good meal (this is France after all!).

It turned out we had managed to arrive in Paris on a public holiday – 8th May, which marks Victory in Europe Day: the quote below is from https://job-in-france.babylangues.com/french-traditions/8th-may-in-france/

“The 8th May is a bank holiday in France to celebrate Victory Day, which marks the formal acceptance by the Allies of Nazi Germany’s surrender in 1945, consequently ending World War II in Europe. The first act was signed in Reims, France, on the 7th May and the final act on the 8th May in Berlin”

It explained why the streets seemed strangely quiet in the business districts and most of the shops were shut. Interestingly, for many years the commemoration held in France in May 1945 wasn’t observed and it was only on 2nd October 1981 that President Mitterand restored the commemoration of victory and in 1982, the 8th May became an official national holiday. Each year there is a parade held along the Champs Elysées as well as many other commemorative ceremonies across France.

Our taxi driver helpfully explained things to us in French, which we mostly understood. Once we reached the streets around the Palais Royale and the Musée du Louvre, the area was packed with throngs of tourists, which was actually a bit of a relief as we knew then that cafes and restaurants must still be open (it was lunchtime by this point).

We dropped our bags, freshened up and after a quick cuppa headed out to explore the area.

I wrote quite a bit about this same part of Paris and in particular the restoration of Notre Dame in my previous Paris series here, whilst on a trip with my daughter, Mlle, in August 2022. On last year’s visit, it was just a short stroll down the street to see the iconic cathedral. Still clad in scaffolding, it wasn’t due to reopen till later in the year. I would love to revisit to see for myself what the remodelled interior looks like now – a far cry from the rather dark and gloomy interior I remember from previous years (you can see some pictures of the renovated building here).

Having wandered around Notre Dame Square, we crossed the road and discovered (as one often does in Paris) a delightful public park, The Square René Viviani and strolled round enjoying the relative solitude in comparison to the crowds in the cathedral square. Beautifully maintained (with warnings about not littering to avoid encouraging the local rats!) the gardens are situated to the north of the old Gothic church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, built at the same time as Notre Dame and one of Paris’s oldest churches. Having fallen into disrepair and ruin, the church was taken over by the Greek Melchite Church and is now the centre of that community in Paris.

The Square René Vivian is adjacent to the Rue de la Bûcherie where you can find the famous bookshop Shakespeare and Company plus the restaurant, Le Petit Châtelet, that Mlle and I visited in 2022 (see here for that post). Monsieur and I checked to make sure it was still open (it was and we went there the following evening) and then headed across the Seine up to Le Marais district in the 4th arrondissement, which I’ll write about in the next post.

I’ve collated all the Paris posts I’ve previously done on the blog here.

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