My recommendations for Paris 🇫🇷
Things to do in the City of Lights 😍
During some free time I had yesterday, I was looking through my study abroad pictures, fondly remembering my wonderful experiences in Paris. Explorations around the city, many museum visits, biking around with Joe — what a lovely time!
For some reason, I randomly remembered my friend Gib’s long list of recommendations of what to do in Paris and thought it would be interesting to make such a list of my own.
And so in another chunk of free time today, I decided to make a list of Parisian recommendations for you all. Hooray!
The majority of these recommendations come from Gib’s original list (her actual name is Giselle, which I almost forgot after months of exclusively calling her Gibs, Gibbles, or other derivatives of her original name!), with so many great spots to eat, visit, and be a tourist.
Basically, I copy-pasted that list here, removed some of the things I wasn’t able to try (just yet), and added some of the things on my own things from my Google Maps list that I saved over the four months I lived there. The result is this compilation here!
Hooray!!
The compilation is split up into a few sections:
Tourist Attractions + Areas
Restaurants + Boulangeries
Bars
Study Spaces
Transportation
Let’s do this thing!!!
Of course, to see all the other things I did around Europe during my exchange, read all the original blog posts from 2023!
Tourist Attractions + Areas
The big thing here is that with your Parisian student ID, you’re able to access all museums in Paris FOR FREE! Whenever I had a multi-hour break between classes, I’d walk across the Seine to the Louvre or some other world-class museum, what a special time.
Here are some more great things to do:
Eiffel Tower, Champs de Mars, Trocadero (watch out for pickpocketers lol)
River cruise along the Seine! (we had one included in our student orientation at Sciences Po, and I went on another one with my family!)
Jardin de Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens) —> amazing place to relax and feel like a Parisian among marble statues and water fountains
Le Marais (great shopping district)
Champs Élysées (yummy macaroons can be found here)
Opéra Palais Garnier (“my fave must go” -Gibs)
Musee de Louvre
Pantheon
Shakespeare and Company (amazing English bookshop —> “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise”)
Parc des Princes (go watch a PSG game! I saw the PSG v Newcastle Champions League game here, SO epic)
59 Rivoli —> super cool rotating artists’ exhibitions open to the public, for free!
Musee d’Orsay
Sacre Coeur —> epic views of all of Paris (the entire Montmarte district is stunning)
Le Flores —> amazing cafe near Sciences Po with yummy onion soup
Au Sauvignon (another great dinner spot near Sciences Po, location of a semi-successful date with a very attractive Swiss girl)
Hotel des Invalides (epic golden dome where Napoleon is entombed)
Bois de Vincennes (location of many great runs and lots of geese!)
Pont Neuf (point = bridge in French)
Pont des Arts (another bridge across the Seine)
Musee Rodin (amazing sculptures and statues! Home to The Thinker —> “Le Pensuer”)
Pont Alexandre III (the coolest golden bridge across the Seine, right in front of the Invalides dome!)
Paris Sewer Museum (I was skeptical of this one, but it was actually so cool and surprisingly, not smelly at all!)
Pasteur Institute (where the name “pasteurization” comes from)
Bois de Boulogne (especially the lakes here!)
Restaurants / Boulangeries
Bouillon Republique (this place is actually so fucking delicious and we went there many times with the Paree gang) —> super cheap prices, great vibes, unlimited bread 🥖
Ai-hua restaurant (below Gibs’s old apartment 🥹)
Julhès Paris —> super delicious boulangerie right by Joe’s house (boulangerie = bakery)
MY BELOVED URBAN GRILL (across the street from where I lived) —> BEST KEBABS EVER
Crêperie Genia (really cheap, super delicious)
Jozi Brunch
Boulangerie Legrand (the DELICIOUS boulangerie near Sciences Po, where I’d get a baguette literally every day for 1€20)
Carton Paris
Tout Autour du Pain (“All around the Bread”, amazing pain au chocolats, or chocolate croissants)
Chez Alain Miam Miam (the best sandwiches EVER)
Bars
The best thing I can recommend about bars is to download the amazing app Mr. Goodbeer, which shows you the cheapest beers available in map view. My Parisian era was my pints era, which officially started when I got a pint with Joe, Emma, and Ben after the study abroad meet-and-greet picnic on the Champ de Mars (where we met!). When choosing bars, we usually prioritized finding the cheapest pint around.
With Mr. Goodbeer, you can also see exactly when bars have their happy hours and filter by price. What an AMAZING app to have abroad!
Chez Prune —> great for dates, too
Le Nouvel Institut —> yummy pints and location of the below picture
Transport
Paris has a very developed public transit system of trains, buses, and the metro. There is also a TREMENDOUS bike sharing system called Vélib Metropole, which was my main form of transportation around Paris. Unless it was pouring rain or the location was several hours away, I rode the vélib bikes everywhere.
The metro is numbered (lines 1-14) and underground the metro trains run relatively close to the surface. The RER trains are lettered (lines A-K) and these trains run much deeper underground —> they lead from the center of Paris to the far suburbs, whereas the metro stays primarily within Paris proper. For the trains, buses, and metro, you can get a Navigo subscription card for cheaper per-ride rates.
Or you can get a vélib bike subscription, and ride those everywhere instead!
Study
Even though I studied probably a total of 40 hours over the course of the entire semester, I spent a lot of time “studying” with friends while I wrote my blogs abroad. Here are my favorite places:
Bibliothèque Sainte-Genevieve (a beautiful, Hogwarts-esque library right near the Pantheon) —> This was the first time I encountered a library with a line to get inside
Certified Café (near Sciences Po with great WiFi)
Strada Cafe —> great lattes
Le Pain Quotidien (this one was right by my apartment, and I often went there for the soup of the day and fast WiFi)
The 3 Apple Stores in Paris! I love Apple Stores and would study at them often because of the comfortable tables and chairs and lightning-fast WiFi. The staff didn’t care, and I got some of my finest work done in the Apple Marché Saint-Germain! The other two are at Opéra and on the Champs-Elysees.
And that’s all from me! Enjoy your trip to PARIS