No city really multitasks like Paris, shorthand for romance, culture, fashion, gastronomy and the kind of street life you find on Robert Doisneau calendars. The £69 Eurostar return opens up a vista of civilised pleasures: the best cheese shops (Androuet), the loveliest perfumeries (Serge Lutens, Palais Royal), the best markets (Marché des Enfants Rouge), the prettiest dolls’ house shop (Pain d’Epices), the most engaging museum (Jacquemart-André). Armed only with Patricia Wells’s unsurpassed Food Lover’s Guide to Paris, Inès de la Fresange’s style guide, Parisian Chic, and the Penguin Map Guide or the little brown Paris version of the A-to-Z, you’re on a roll.
Yes, I know London’s meant to be where it’s at when it comes to cultural dynamism and ethnic restaurants (though Paris has an interesting Japanese vibe just now), that many of Paris’s finest are tax exiles in Britain, that the irresistible Left Bank cafés where smoking Gauloises was practically obligatory have been displaced by all-day Anglo-American eateries.
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