My Paris Guide: Le Marais

Welcome to the Marais (and if you're looking for the guide to the Bastille, click here, the general guide to Paris click here).

Let's start in the heart of the Marais, the Place des Vosges. I used to chase pigeons in this park when I was a little girl because my grandmother lived in the square. It's one of the oldest squares in all of paris and is a great place to rest after a long day or to just grab some lunch and hang out on the grass. While I was there, from one day to the next, the leaves started to change.




From here you'll find the rue des Francs Bourgois and I recommend that you walk it all the way to Beaubourg. All along are great little shops and chic Parisians strutting their stuff. turn right or left off of this street onto Rue Vieille du Temple or Rue de Temple and you'll find shops and interesting moments everywhere.

A couple of shops I love in the area:





Autour du Monde
8 rue des francs Bourgeois
12 rue des Francs Bourgeois
75003 Paris




Les Archives de la Presse
51 rue des Archives
75003 Paris




Muji (in the Marais)
47 rue des Francs Bourgeois
75004 Paris



Le Petit Atelier de Paris (not to be missed!).



A hardware store and department store. check out the basement level for the legs to those fantastic flea market tables and also lots of fun french signs and doorknobs and such. It's right across the street from the Hotel de Ville.
BHV
14 rue du Temple
75004 Paris






FR 66. All French designers, all picked by the heads of FR66, Corinne and Maryline Brustolin . A lot of the pieces are made from recycled elements and a lot of the pieces have a sense of humor. I loved how sleek but slightly silly the pieces were and how carefully chosen the showroom floor was.

25 Rue de Renard
75004 Paris



Portobello
(I forgot to write down the address and can't find them online, walk around you might find it!).


Rue des Rosiers is the Jewish area of quarter and here you can find incredible falafel and a good amount of hip shops and lots and lots of people.


And finally, the Pompidou Center, or as the French call it, Beaubourg. It's modern art museum, the building itself is incredible and was widely lauded and hated when it was first constructed. Go to the top level to eat at Georges and to get one of the best views of paris!

My Paris Guide

Phew, I've been back almost a week and am just now able to compile some of my favorite places to go while in Paris. I'm starting with the neighborhood I 'live in' when I'm there.

Bastille (11th and a little bit of the 12th):


If you only go one place I suggest Monoprix. And you can do this in any part of the city since it's just the neighborhood grocery store. But what makes it amazing is that it doesn't only sell food (and french candy and wine and nutella, etc) but it has a stationery section, cosmetics and clothes and it's relatively inexpensive. If I had to compare it to something it's almost like a french version of Target but 1/10th the size and 200% cooler. My favorite things to check out: yogurt, cool graph paper notebooks, little cups, bras, scarves, garnier lotion (that they don't sell in the states), and shower gel (le petit marseillaise!).

These are all over, but my favorite is the one on the corner of rue de Faubourg St. Antoine and Ledru-Rollin.

Not far from here is the best daily flea market in Paris: Marche D'aligre. My grandmother has been shopping here daily for about 40 years. Plus there's a regular fruit and vegetable market there everyday. Check out the covered part of the market for a trip back in time and also tons of north african ingredients and fresh cheese and poultry. This blog goes a little more in depth on the subject.



(also, I LOVE these tables. they look all mid-century and cool but are really just cheap collapsible metal sawhorses that you can buy at any hardware store for less than $20. I considered trying to fit some into my suitcase. I mean c'mon, how cool are these legs?)

Then all up and down Rue de Faubourg St Antoine are new stores that are way fancier than the area's roots which used to be furniture makers and workshops and is now a lot of bars and expensive stores (you will also now find a Nike store and a Starbucks on this street). That said, I love this street, it's where my family has lived for ages. Try peeking into one of the courtyards. You might find something like this :

(this is 'my' courtyard, where I always stay and where my family lived back in the day. It was featured in this terrible movie, which I watched because it featured 'my' courtyard. Not worth it.)

With the history is the new:


Ligne Roset
25 Faubourg St Antoine
75011 Paris


Habitat
17 Faubourg St Antoine
75001 Paris

Then pop down Rue de Charonne and find two of my favorite restaurants:

Chez Paul, a classic French restaurant for dinner with steaks and wine and gratin d'auphinoise!


And the Pause Cafe: good food, more neighborhoody, nice ambience and great interior. Lunches are pretty relaxed and dinners a re a bit more formal, but barely.

Just across from the Pause Cafe is the Cafe Du Peintre a classic Bistro that's great for lunch or dinner.

Also on Rue de Charonne are some of my favorite clothing stores, most notably Isabel Marant (just across from Chez Paul). She is a classic French designer who any woman in France knows of. She makes simple pieces that sometimes look a little vintage and her 'etoile' line is a little less expensive than the main line.



In general the 11th is a bit far to the East for most tourists looking to hit up the main sites in Paris. And although the area has picked up a lot (a lot!) in the last 15 years, you can still get a sense of how Paris used to be. Keep walking towards the 12th and you'll see it even more. A couple of other notes about the area:

• There's a big Sunday Market in the Place de la Bastille with more food than you thought possible. So when eveyrthing's closed go to the market and buy your meals for the day.

• Eventhough it seems touristy, it's actually really pleasant to sit in one of the cafe's in the Place and people watch. But be warned, you'll pay around $6 for a coffee, but you can sit there all day.

• If you're thinking of staying in the Bastille, you're in luck because line 1 of the Metro stops here giving you perfect access to most of the big guns: The Marais, Louvre, Tuilleries, Champs Elysees, etc.

Le Petit Atelier de Paris

I'm working on a little Paris Guide to augment the one that I put together a while ago. In the meantime I just had to share one of the stores that I've talked about but finally got to go to: Le Petit Atelier de Paris. It's a design studio run by a couple who make the loveliest everyday objects like cups, bowls and vases. Everything is delicate, white, sweet and simple. In short, everything that makes me swoon. I walked away with a couple of their ceramic duralex shaped cups.






They're located in the Marais but off the beaten path so it took me a little walking to figure out exactly where they were. The store was quiet and they have it lit darkly so it feels a little bit like a church when you enter. Then this happy dog meets you and, if you're me, you're immediately charmed and convinced that this is the highlight of your trip to Paris.


Then they wrap up your purchases like this and it's just too perfect. I also just popped over to their site and noticed that they keep up a little blog, and now I want them to adopt me so that I can hang out with them all the time.

Le Petit Atelier de Paris
31 Rue de Montmorency
75003, Paris

Paris

Hello! So after 2 days of terrible internet issues that are keeping me from my regular posts on AT I found a free 30 minute connection at a cafe. Phew. I've missed the internet, let me tell you. I think I might have a problem.

Anyway, I'm in Paris, it's very Paris and I plan to go to as many as these places as I can manage in the day and a half I have left: colette, palais de tokyo for some real art, ilovemyblender, ugly home and le bouclard and the marche d'aligre.

It's going to be a lot (if I make it) but I'm only here for a couple of days and want to soak it up! Much more, very soon!