Paris and Beyond: City, Champagne, Versailles

Vintage 2CV tour

You just got off a transatlantic flight, your hotel room isn't ready, and you have hours to kill. Skip the café and do something with your jet lag: a vintage Citroën 2CV tour hits every iconic landmark in two hours while someone else navigates Paris traffic. Your driver picks you up curbside, the canvas roof rolls back, and suddenly you're passing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre-Dame with wind in your hair instead of blisters on your feet. It's the most efficient first impression of the city I've found. And you'll know exactly what you want to return to on foot.

Musée d'Orsay

Skip the Louvre. Controversial advice, but hear me out: the Orsay is smaller, the art is more accessible, and the crowds are manageable. More importantly, many of these paintings depict Paris. Monet's flag-draped Rue Montorgueil. Renoir's dappled light at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre. Caillebotte's workers scraping floors in a Haussmannian apartment. After you leave, you can walk to the actual locations. That's not something the Mona Lisa offers.

Père Lachaise Cemetery

Yes, Jim Morrison is here. So are Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and Edith Piaf. But I send people to Père Lachaise for the graves they've never heard of: Héloïse and Abélard, the medieval lovers whose 800-year-old remains were reunited here in 1817. Étienne-Gaspard Robertson, a Belgian magician whose tomb features a gothic skull emerging from drapery. Richard Wright, who wrote Native Son and died in Paris in 1960. Enter from the Gambetta metro and walk downhill. You'll cover more ground with less effort and end near the main entrance where maps are available.

Versailles & market day

Everyone tells you to go to Versailles. I'm telling you to go on a Tuesday, Friday, or Sunday. That's when the Marché Notre-Dame is open. Arrive early, grab coffee at The Stray Bean near the train station (Australian-run, excellent flat whites), then walk to the market before the palace opens at 9 am. Buy cheese, charcuterie, bread, and fruit. Tour the palace, then eat your haul on the Plaine Saint-Antoine or along the Grand Canal while tour groups file into overpriced cafeterias. The market was voted best in Île-de-France in 2025 for a reason.

Private Champagne day trip

The big Champagne houses. Moët, Veuve Clicquot. They're fine, but they're theme parks. What you want is a private driver who takes you to grower-producers in villages like Hautvillers and Aÿ, where families have made Champagne for generations and you're tasting in their actual cellars. Not a corporate visitor center. Companies like Sparkling Tour or Aÿ Champagne Experience run small-group tours for €100–150 per person. Reims is 45 minutes by TGV from Gare de l'Est. Go on a clear day, drink someone's life's work, and be back in Paris for dinner.

The Marais & Jewish Quarter

The Marais is where I send people when they want to wander without an agenda. Start on Rue des Rosiers for flaky rugelach and the city's best falafel. L'As du Fallafel has the line; Mi-Va-Mi across the street is just as good with half the wait. But this neighborhood isn't just food. It's centuries of Jewish, LGBTQ+, and artistic history layered onto medieval streets that predate Haussmann's boulevards. No itinerary required. Get lost on purpose.

Montmartre beyond Sacré-Cœur

The basilica is worth seeing. Once. Then turn around and walk away from the crowds into the actual neighborhood: narrow staircases, ivy-covered walls, and pâtisseries that exist for residents, not tourists. Find a place with a short line and no English menu. Order whatever's in the case. Sit on a bench and watch the neighborhood go about its morning. This is the Paris that doesn’t photograph well but stays with you longer.

Mắm From Hanoï

France colonized Vietnam for nearly a century. That history is complicated and painful, but one result is that Paris has a Vietnamese community dating back generations and some of the best pho outside of Hanoi. This tiny spot in the Sentier neighborhood holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. A Hanoi-born couple runs the kitchen, and the menu is tight: pork nems with their house mắm sauce, and a Northern-style pho that's lighter and slightly salty, the way it's made in the North. Book a week ahead. It fills up fast, and for good reason.

Chez Denise (La Tour Montlhéry)

This is the Paris that Anthony Bourdain loved. A Les Halles institution open since 1966, serving food until 5 am to night owls, chefs finishing their shifts, and anyone who wants a proper blanquette de veau at 2 in the morning. The portions are enormous. The waiters have seen everything. Order the baba au rhum for dessert; they leave the bottle of rum at your table. It's not trying to be cool. It just is.

Autour du Yangtse

You've had French food for three days. You're dreaming about soup dumplings. Good news: some of the best Huaiyang Chinese food I've eaten is a ten-minute walk from the Louvre. Autour du Yangtse doesn't look like much from the outside. That's the point. Order the xiao long bao and the Porc Dongpo. Skip the obvious tourist lunch spots near the museum. Come here instead.

Le Baron Rouge

A wine bar the size of a living room, a block from Marché d'Aligre. No seats. You stand at barrels or spill onto the sidewalk. They pour directly from casks lined against the wall. On weekends, someone's usually shucking oysters out front. This is where the neighborhood drinks, not where tourists take photos. Go on a Sunday morning after the market.

Hoppy Corner

Sometimes you're just over wine. I get it. Hoppy Corner is a craft beer bar in the 2nd arrondissement with a rotating tap list and a crowd that skews younger and louder than your average Parisian wine bar. It's small, unpretentious, and exactly what you need when you want a good IPA and a break from the grape.