A Short Week In Paris To-Do List

A week in Paris will ease the bite of it.” - This quote from Billy Strayhorn’s iconic song, LUSH LIFE, holds truth today, as much as it did when he completed it in 1936.

Paris is eternal.  The City of Light is arguably the most beautiful city in the world.  If one reached in one’s pocket to find he had only enough for a coffee at a sidewalk café on the Champs Elysee, and did nothing more than that, it would afford, in its own way, as satisfying an experience as a month at the Louvre or a fancy dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant.  To be sure, modern-day Paris has all the inherent troubles of any large international global city.  But no amount of yellow-vested discord, or terror event can ever hope to touch its people, its gardens, its architecture, its history.

Here is a short week to-do list.  A thumbnail sketch.  Follow it slowly.  Let the feel of Paris, the smell and taste of it, hit you, separate, and flow around and over you, as if you are a rock in the middle of the Seine.

You have three days and nights.  Go!

Day One — Walk the steps to Montmartre.  View the views you loved in the film, AMALIE. Follow your nose into patisseries and charcuteries.  Select your treats carefully.  Savor them seated on a park bench while listening to an accordionist wearing a beret.  Tip him. Then stroll into the sacred heart of Sacre Coeur Church.  

Day Two — Walk, or take the lift, to the top of the Eiffel Tower,  followed by a walking tour of the area called the Trocadero, directly across the Seine, then on to the Arc de Triomphe.  

Day Three — Visit the Louvre even if just to visit the loo.  One could dedicate a year to its treasures. https://www.louvre.fr/en/homepage Two more human-scaled museums are the Musee d’Orsay,  or the Pompidou,   Stroll along the Seine to view the still mighty Notre Dame Cathedral defiant in all its damaged glory.  

Like Notre Dame itself, you’ll be back.