Paris on foot

Today we had a full but organic itinerary planned. We hopped onto the metro and made our way to Place Des Voges for a lovely breakfast in the sunshine at Café Cour Des Vosges. We then wandered through Place Des Vosges for some obligatory snaps.

Next we made our way to the Musée Histoire De Paris Carnavalet, a free museum that is dedicated to the history of the city. The museum occupies two neighbouring mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Pelerier de Saint Fargeau. The 16th century building contains furnished rooms from different periods of Paris history, historic objects and a large collection of paintings of Paris life. They depict the city’s history and development and its notable characters. There was an exhibition recently in Bendigo with artefacts and paintings on loan from the Musée Carnavalet. I saw this in June, but it is only a fraction of what is displayed here in Paris.

After visiting the museum, we walked about 2 kms to Place de Republique where we happened upon a fashion event. There were well dressed young people all over the place, there were photographers, there were people being interviewed and there was a real buzz in the air. After taking snaps of some of the more interesting people, we headed on towards our destination, Canal Saint-Martin, an area we haven’t been to previously. Here we found a great place for lunch. Café Lino was run by a lovely Italian couple who made their own focaccia which they used to make the most delicious toasted focaccias. Katie had a cheese one and Ian and I opted for the focaccia du jour which was speck, champignon and scamorza fumé cheese, and for 2 euro more it came with a salad that had the most delicious tomatoes. After lunch, Katie decided she had done enough walking and made her way back to our hotel.

Ian and I stayed at café Lino to finish our wine and have an expresso before heading off on a walk along canal Saint-Martin and then back towards the Bastille. This was about a 3.5 kms walk along the canal, including where it ran underground and was covered by a linear park adjacent to some lovely streets. From Bastille we made our way towards the Coulée Verte René-Dumont walk. This has been established on a viaduct and was the inspiration for the High Line in NYC. Before climbing up and strolling above Paris we decided refreshments were in order. We stopped at a lovely bar where I had a G&T and Ian a glass of red.

The Coulée Verte is a 4.7 km elevated linear park built on top of an obsolete railway bridge in the 12th arrondissement. It is the end of summer here and so the flowers are fading but the gardens are still green and lush. We walked about half of it before descending and making our way to Île Saint-Louis for a Berthillon ice-cream (we both ended up choosing sorbet). We then walked to Notre-Dame to check out the progress on repairing the roof. A lot has been done in the last year but there is still some work to be completed. It is now expected that the doors will reopen on 7 & 8 December.

We then headed back to the hotel and had dinner at Café Dupleix. We covered over 18 kms walking around this beautiful city today.Read more