In January 2023, my team at Doist had a meeting in Paris, so I scheduled one week before the meeting to be a tourist in Paris. What I’m writing below is a combination of the time I had as a tourist with my wife and the places we visited before/after work.

Stay

In the first week I stayed with my wife on Hotel Louvre Richelieu. It’s a 3 star hotel close to the louvre. We liked the place, it’s exactly what we needed to enjoy our time as a couple in Paris. We got lucky to find a Brazilian girl as the receptionist as soon as I arrived and we got a bunch of great tips. She even drafted a schedule for us and recommended places to eat (thanks Hanna!). Amazing experience. I would totally recommend this place.

In the second week, my team booked two Airbnb’s from the same company. They are colled Urban stay in Paris. I wouldn’t recommend this one. The neighborhood is nice (close to the Sebastopol station) with nice options of restaurants and cafes nearby, but the place itself if far from perfect. The crew is OK-ish (the have kind of an office right next to it), but when we compare with the previous one, they are far behind.

Airport

I went to the main airport, Charles de Gaule (CDG). It’s a nice airport, I have no problems to report. It was not very confusing to understand the transport to Paris from there, we just had to ask. I got money from an ATM quite easily too.

When going back home, I arrived a bit earlier and quite enjoyed the places they have between the gates. Had the chance to play street fighter II with a random guy from Hong Kong 😀. They have some arcades and PS5 between the gates K at the time of this writing.

I usually look for lounges now that my credit cards gives me access to them, and CDG doesn’t seem to be a good place for these things. The only one I found was quite far from the K gates and doesn’t offer much more than places to rest.

Transport

If you’re planning on staying one week in Paris, I would totally recommend you to use the weekly Navigo card. At the time of this writing, it costs 30EUR from Monday to Sunday. Apparently, you can’t buy it on Sunday, which was our case, so we had to pay ~12EUR to get from CDG to Paris. If it’s not your case, you can pay 30EUR, get the weekly card and use it from the airport to Paris and back. The card works weekly for almost any transport inside the city. Even for he funicular and for Versailles.

If you just want to use the metro a few times inside the city, you can buy 10tickets in one go and it’s going to be less expensive.

The card requires your picture in it, but you can ask the hotel to just copy your passport and use the same picture.

If you don’t want the card, you can use this on Android and just use its NFC capabilities everywhere.

Places

Eiffel tower

The most known monument in the world, it’s totally worth visiting. I went on the winter, so I was not able to go to the top floor. They say even the second floor is quite cold, so I decided to just skip it and find a different place to have a top view of the city. I want one with the view of the tower. You can’t see the tower when you are in it. :)

I would totally recommend to go to the Trocadero station and start your visit from there. The view is amazing.

The tower lights up with a different illumination 5 mins every hour (18:00 to 18:05, 19:00 to 19:05, etc.), so prepare yourself for ths if you want to see it at night.

Palais Garnier (Opera)

The biggest Opera in Europe and the place that inspired the Phantom of the Opera. It was an interesting visit, especially when you’re planning to visit the D’orsay museum, as it has a complement to it.

Arms museum (Invalides)

I’m very into armors, shields, maces, swords, and stuff like that. I usually visit any museum that may have such a thing. This is one of them. They have a nice collection that goes from the sword/shiweld/mace times until the present times. I was able to see a temporary exposition about army intelligence. I’m not a big fan of modern armies though.

This is the place that holds the ashes of Napoleon too.

D’Orsay museum

Nice art museum. It was a train station in the past and you can totally see this in its architecture. They have a small structure that shows the complete architecture of the Opera and it’s amazing. I also enjoyed the view of the café behind the clock in the upper floor. Didn’t have coffee there because it was too expensive, though.

Catacombs of Paris

I was looking for this experience and it was worth it. You can only walk in one specific path of the catacombs, but it’s still nice to see it. The audioguide explaining the whole story is a great complement to the visit.

Louvre musuem

The Louvre is huge! I had the chance to go there twice and it enjoyed both visits. The Janconda (Mona Lisa) is the most famous one, but there are some amazing paintings there. Some of them are 10m wide!

They have the foundations of the Louvre in the underground, from the times it was still a fortress. I really liked this part and the story of the building itself.

Pantheon

The place where many important minds of our time were buried. Voltaire, Braille, Marie curie, etc.

They also have a very big pendulum which serves as a scientific experiment to show the influence of earth’s rotation over the movement. It’s quite cool.

Saint Sulpice

Me and my wife are into Dan Brown stories, so we wanted to visit places mentioned in the Da Vinci code. This is one of them. I really liked the church. The part that is mentioned in the Da Vinci code is a scientific study that is cool to see and read about. You can see the real thing and remember the fictional version. 😅

Versailles

I went on the winter, so it’s not that nice as it should be on spring or autumn, but I still quite enjoyed it. It’s weird to think that one family would be the owner of that whole thing.

It’s not close to Paris. Expect to spend one full day there as you will spend 2 hours on transport on that day and the thing is huge.

The visits to the small palace and the big one are worth it. Walking through the gardens to get there is a nice experience, even in the winter if you’re lucky to not get any rain.

Petit palace

The Grand Palace was closed for renovations (winter 🤷‍♂️), but we had the chance to visit the Petit palace. The entrance is free and I think it’s worth visiting. Nothing outstanding alone, but the whole is quite nice.

Food

I always do a disclamer here because I’m not very into finding good food in places. I mostly ask for some recommendations and then eat whatever is easy and not expensive after this. I’m going to add here the places I went and the ones that people recommended me to go.

Le chalet savoyard

This one was definitely the jewel of this whole trip in term of food. I had the chance to go there twice, so I had the Raclette and the Foundue. They were both amazing, I can’t recommend this place enough. It’s not that cheap but totally worth it.

Be sure to reserve it because the locals pack it full quite fast.

Birdy burger

This is a nice place we found when we were hungry. A small place, friendly staff, tasty burger, and not very expensive. I would totally go there again.

Creperie da pontivy

We had a Galette there (salty crepe) that was very good. Got a crepe as dessert and enjoyed it too. We had to split a crepe for two because the Galette was too much.

joyeux

A nice place for a good coffee.

Higuma

It is near the Richelieu hotel and has some good dumplings. It’s not a fancy place, but the dumplings were great and there usually a line at the door, so it’s usually a good sign. 😉

Coworking

While in Paris, we got a coworking for our meetings. We stayed at the Imagine office coworking and the experience was nice. Nothing to complain.