Reading · both feet on the ground

(You might also like stockholm in january and helsinki in february and norwich in march)

One of the most frequent squabbles I have with my partner (sorry, S, if you’re reading, I promise this piece isn’t about you) is whether things can be wildly, overly popular and still as good as people say they are. He is a man who would rather not eat than queue for an hour for a table at Dishoom; who thinks of Instagram suggestions as places to avoid rather than places to seek out. And sometimes, when I bite into a tasteless pastry from a bakery with perfect aesthetics, or drag us for hours to an ultimately pretty underwhelming viewpoint, I have to concede: some things, it is true, are simply overhyped.

But I hold firm: some things - lots of things! - are popular simply because they’re so pleasing. There is nothing embarrassing about claiming them as your favourite: you’re definitely not the only one. Lindt chocolate, cloudless skies, fancy balsamic vinegar, Bach’s Goldberg variations, good red wine, an episode of Friends, percy pigs. The more clichéd, the better. And here is the very best: Paris in the Spring.

Or, more specifically, Paris in April. Late April, if you can, once the wisteria is out, lilac bunches draping over sandy bricks and doors of muted navy wood; once it's light until nearly 9pm (Paris really lucks out in the whole location-relative-to-time-zone lottery); once it’s warm enough to sit on a quai with an apéro. Mon Dieu. Paris in April drips with romanticism, and, yes, with clichés, but it’s only because it’s so damn good. What did Claude Monet, George Gershwin and Emily Cooper have in common? They couldn’t resist it. And they weren’t wrong.

It was early April when I moved to Paris back in 2016, and it was mid April when I visited with my family a few years ago. It’s by far my favourite time of year to be there: there is never a bad time, but it does lose some of its appeal for me in the stuffy height of summer, trapping 35c heat in rooms that weren’t made for it.

Here’s how I’d spend a weekend in Paris if I were there right about now.

I’d arrive on a mid-morning Eurostar: no need for the self-punishment of getting to St Pancras in time for the 6am departure, but the 7.30 or 8.01 get into Gare du Nord before midday. If I’d been extra canny (which I would have), I’d have booked seats as close to the front of the train as possible, because those trains are long and it’s a tedious start to a weekend in Paris, trudging along a crowded platform behind people with too much luggage. And then, the glory of the Eurostar: you step out of the station into the middle of the city. It’s recognisably, indisputably Paris, buzzy and stylish and alive, even if you’re not in the nicest bit (yet).

I’d walk, of course: a wiggle slightly north and east of Gare du Nord, up to Jaurès, where I’d join the Canal Saint-Martin, and follow it southwards as far as it goes. On a sunny day - which, in late April, this would be - I’d pass endless clusters of chic Parisians sitting by the water, talking, reading, smoking, eating. At some point along the canal, I might sit a while and join them.

Trees leaning over the Canal Saint-Martin, reflecting on the water below

I’d have booked somewhere to stay in the Marais, and that’s where my walk would take me, eventually, leaving the canal somewhere near République and wandering into the cobbled alleys to the south. I lived in the Marais during my Parisian stint on my year abroad, in an apartment a stone’s throw from Saint Paul metro station and the Seine beyond it. My dear friend and flatmate kept our tiny fridge well stocked with hummus and white wine and delicious butter with little crystals of salt, and on weekday evenings we’d come home from our internships (mine more tedious than hers) and waltz out to meet friends at a bar or play boules by the river. I think we were just about aware that this wasn’t what real life would be like; that this was a brief fever dream of an extended holiday before adulthood really kicked in, but visiting again now, it’s hard to believe it happened.

But, as the saying goes: we will always have Paris. The Marais is still there, and I would spend a few hours pottering around its streets and paying homage to my old haunts: a wrap from L’As du Falafel; a glass of wine at Le Pick-Clops; a galette at Crêperie Suzette; a mooch around the many inviting shops; a sit-down on the grass at Place des Vosges; a coffee in the courtyard of l’Institut Suédois (the writing was on the wall, even then).

Looking down Rue de Sévigné towards Paroisse Saint-Paul Saint-Louis

Then down to the river for my favourite loop: a wander around the edges of both îles, the île Saint-Louis and the île de la Cité, in either order, with little detours down whichever alleys are catching the light in the most appealing way. I used to love stopping to admire Notre-Dame from every angle, and seeing it covered in scaffolding after the fire was a visceral shock. It’s too long since I was last in Paris, to know how it’s doing now - but I’d love to find out. Other than that, there are no specific sights to see on this loop, only that everything is a sight: the way the buildings huddle into each other, slightly skew and irregular like a particularly charming illustration, the Seine flowing gently below. It would be evening by now, Paris gleaming in golden hour. I’d pick up some provisions from a marché - a baguette, olives, cheese, crisps, hummus, a cold beer or perhaps a bottle of wine - and find a spot on a quai - perhaps Quai des Célestins - and wile away the evening there.

I’d start the next day in the only acceptable way for an early morning in Paris: a croissant and a coffee (café allongé, s’il vous plaît). I wouldn’t need to seek out a particular bakery: in fact, I’d be weary of the ones with the longest queues and the most obvious tourists waiting outside. I’d be torn between a simple croissant and a pain au chocolat, and realistically, I’d choose both.

And onwards. If I’d been really organised, I might have booked a morning slot at a gallery, before it gets too busy. Not the Louvre: you need a whole day for that, and I’d rather come back on a dark and rainy November day than squash inside just as the city starts to bloom. Not the Musée de l’Orangerie, either, which has become so popular with influencers on photoshoots that you can barely make out a waterlily. But I am fond of the Musée d’Orsay, with its vast clock and enviable collection of some of the very best impressionist paintings: Monet and Manet, Degas, Renoir, Gaugin, van Gogh.

The other big thing on the morning’s agenda would be, quite specifically, to sit on one of the iconic lime green metal chairs by a fountain in one of the city’s jardins. I’m ambivalent about which jardin: I like Jardin du Luxembourg and Jardin des Plantes in the south, but I also find the grandeur of the Jardin des Tuileries, right in the centre, difficult to resist. (Like I said: a cliché for a reason). No, what I love most about these gardens is the scattering of stylish green chairs, somehow always just enough of them that you can rock up and find one, free to use, no authority telling you not to move them. I’d find a chair and place it by the water and just out of the sun, and sit a while with my book in the morning breeze.

Ok. So. You do not need to go to the Eiffel Tower. You can see the Eiffel Tower from so much of Paris, and I’d much rather take it in as part of the skyline than get up close with it. But you might be travelling with a Paris first-timer - like my dad, for example - and he might be so eager to stand at its iron feet that you can’t possibly deny him. Frankly, the area directly surrounding the Eiffel Tower is not lovely, and the closer you get, the more you feel like you’ve walked into a nightmare parallel reality of vulgarity and tat. But there is something very cool about approaching it from the west - walking along Rue Saint-Dominique from Solférino, for example, the streets snaking slowly towards it. There’s a sweet spot, I think, somewhere around the intersection with the Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, where you’re close enough to think, oh that’s why its so iconic, but not so close that you wonder how you slipped from heaven into hell.

The Eiffel Tower is a cliché I’d skip, but there’s another cliché I’d actively opt for, like a little tourist moth being drawn to a flame: Montmartre, a jumble of cobbled alleys at the foot of a vast basilica, at the top of a very steep hill. It was once the artists’ colony, which makes so much sense: of course you’d be inspired, up here, with that light and those views. I’m inspired, up here, especially at sunset when the whole city glows. It doesn’t matter that it’s thrumming with people, that the streets are crowded and it’s hard to find a place to sit: of course they’re all up here too, taking it in. (Then an uber crawls up and disturbs the serenity and I try to bite my lip and block out the loud voices of the tourists who spill out of it. Who takes an uber, in Paris?!)

Like being on a film set: a Montmartre side street

This was only a weekend, after all, and it’s almost time to go home now. I’ll have only just scratched the surface, and there are so many things I’ll have to add to my list for next time - from the touristy clichés, like the mesmerising windows of Sainte-Chapelle, the glass pyramids of the courtyard at the Louvre, the stripy pillars at Palais-Royal, and a browse at beloved Shakespeare & Company bookshop, to the many strolls through particular streets and into peaceful parks that filled my weekends back in 2016. I’ll treat myself to a final Parisian treat on my final morning: another pastry; a macaron; a baguette for the train. And I’ll leave feeling amazed, all over again, that this beautiful, good-for-the-soul city is only two hours from London by train. I’ll promise myself I’ll visit more often.

I leave you with, I think, the best photo I’ve ever taken, from our family weekend in Paris two years ago. A bird flew overhead and its shadow passed on the wall between my sister and my dad just at the moment I pressed the shutter: it was a sheer stroke of luck, something I couldn’t have planned and didn’t realise until the film scans came back. Art, from good light and pure serendipity. That’s Paris for you.